


The Monster at the End of This Book

by yellow_caballero



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: /bailey school kids voice History Teachers Can't Be Time Travellers, Gen, Identity Porn, Interdimensional anime conventions, Shakesperian comedy of mistaken identity, Terrible Role Models Attempting to Relate to Children, Time Warp Trio but it's Cosmic Horror, Time-Space fuckery, three twelve year olds without parental supervision what acts of arson will they commit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:47:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27252889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yellow_caballero/pseuds/yellow_caballero
Summary: Every year, the Supernatural Society of Britain holds its annual academic and social conference EvilCon. This year, it will be held in 1999, Bournemouth, England - and almost-teenager Jonathan Sims is going to make it an EvilCon nobody will ever forget.Easier said than done, when Jon has to evade time-traveling history teachers and overbearing parental figures. When it comes to dealing with Messiahs of the Eternal Flame, rare book hunters, and the looming threat of a future apocalypse, he needs all the help he can get. Can Jon untangle these games of mistaken identities  - and will he ever find out who the mysterious figure known as the Archivist truly is?
Relationships: Gerard Keay & Agnes Montague & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist & Alice "Daisy" Tonner
Comments: 49
Kudos: 178





	The Monster at the End of This Book

**Author's Note:**

> Blame LazuliQuetzal, yet again. The rule of this story is that if it's funny, I included it. The first rule of EvilCon is don't think too hard about EvilCon. 
> 
> You know how every time I say this is the stupidest thing I've ever written? THIS is the stupidest thing I've ever written.

Jon was reasonably sure that his History teacher was a time traveller. 

Reasonably sure, because Gran was always saying that he had the tendency to ‘jump to conclusions’ and ‘not think things out.’ Jon personally thought that he thought things out as far as he could, which was generally three or four steps before everything kind of turned into a muddled mess and he was forced to assume that at the end he’d arrive at his desired result. This wasn’t always the case, but no matter how many times Jon explained this his teachers never gave him credit back for his homework. It wasn’t _his_ fault. 

But this time, Jon had outlined what his self-help books called a ‘logical reasoning path’. Jon was so, so good at logical reasoning. Better than almost anybody else, probably. He had started out with a hypothesis, just like Sherlock Holmes, and then he had gathered clues to support that hypothesis, just like Sherlock Holmes. The most important thing was that Jon had evidence to back up his claims this time. This was _not_ like the Billy Ellison and the Werewolf situation. And it wasn’t like the spider book incident either, _Gran_ , that _actually really happened_ -

Anyway. If spider books that made Jon wake up in the middle of the night crying three years later were real, then time travellers were real. And this time, Jon had a _logical reasoning path_. 

Mr. Bouchard _was_ a time traveller. And Jon was going to prove it. 

  
  
  


Step 1: He was _not_ a normal person. 

Mr. Bouchard taught History in a small, creaky old room in the back of Jon’s small, creaky school. He was white and had a mild, unassuming face, with a faint smile always lingering in the corner of his mouth, as if he liked children and enjoyed his job. 

He seemed to enjoy his job. He did not like children. 

Jon didn’t blame him for this - Jon didn’t like children either, and he was a children. It wasn’t as if Mr. Bouchard couldn’t keep control of his classroom - when he walked in the room was silenced, and if he caught you sleeping or chatting in class you would get way worse than a piece of chalk flung at your head. Rachel swore up and down that as punishment for cheating on a test Mr. Bouchard had forced her to remember the death of her cat. Even Jon was somewhat skeptical of this claim, but it didn’t change the fact that he was just weird. 

But his hatred of children was well disguised. He never sneered at anybody, was never unfair or cruel. He was unyielding and inflexible with the rules, but he always stuck extremely strictly to them. Strict, cold, deceptively mild, and in general slightly dispassionate about most things, nobody quite liked him. But nobody quite disliked him either. He had the unique quality of fading to the back of your mind, as boring as the grey suits he always wore. 

“He’s a fuckin’ freak,” Mike pronounced loudly. 

Jon scribbled that down in his notebook - _F****** Freak_ \- nodding fastidiously. “Why do you say so?”

“Have you _heard_ him lecture?” Allison said, wrinkling her nose. She thumped the ball on the cement into Henry’s corner, who dived to catch it before tossing it at Mike. Jon was envious of their Four Square skills - he, himself, was woefully inept, and as such refrained from the game. His growth spurt was coming in _any_ day now and then he’d be _so good at sports_ . “He talks about the Victorians as if he was _there_.”

“He says a tonna words that I dunno,” Henry volunteered. 

“That’s because you’re stupid, Henry,” Mike said. 

“Aw, yeah, I guess…”

“It’s not just the Victorians,” Ruby said quietly, fumbling the ball where Sophie passed it to her. She ran after it, huffing slightly as the little ornaments on the end of her braids swayed, and grabbed it before panting back. She had asthma. She slapped the ball to Mike’s square, who caught it effortlessly. Mike was cool. Mike had his growth spurt. “Remember in our World War One unit last semester? He spent twenty minutes ranting about how Henry Horne was an idiot who puts jam in his tea.”

“What’s wrong with jam in tea?” Jon asked, offended. 

“It’s so granny,” Mike said, wrinkling his nose. 

“It is not!”

“Jon’s granny, which makes it granny,” Henry said, as if he was delivering a life sentence. “You got little string on your glasses too?”

Jon scowled, readjusting his glasses. He had only gotten them last year, and Gran had made him feel real bad about the expense. “Shut up, Henry, you’re stupid. But we all know he knows more than he should about random stuff.”

“He is a history teacher,” Ruby mumbled. “I guess it makes sense…”

“It doesn’t make sense that he wasted an entire class period complaining about television,” Allison said flatly. She accepted the ball back from Henry, dribbling it on the ground just to show off. “He said that Harry and Cosh was the death of society. Mr. Bouchard thinks that all kids should do is sit at home watching documentaries on the roving gangs of feral cows in the American Midwest.”

“Cows are real?” Henry asked, fascinated. 

“Stop dribbling and just pass it, Allie!”

“I have to practice if I’m going to match Denise Lewis,” Allison said snootily. “You just _wish_ you could keep up.”

“More like Scary Spice,” Henry muttered. 

Allison rounded on him. “Stop trying to make me Scary Spice! I’m Sporty Spice, and you’re stupid! Scary Spice is the worst!”

“I like Scary Spice,” Jon muttered.

“That’s because you’re gay,” Mike said. 

“It’s because he’s a Gran,” Henry volunteered. “If he lived with his parents then someone would teach him how to play Four Square.”

“My parents work in Spain!” Jon yelled, quite a bit louder than he meant to. “And I know how to play Four Square, I just don’t like it!”

“ _My_ Gran goes to church with _his_ Gran,” Allison bragged, “and _my_ Gran said that _his_ Daddy had -”

“Shut up!”

“Then don’t lie!

But Jon was already kicking Allison, and Allison was kicking him back, and Mike was calling him gay for kicking a girl, and Henry was anxiously asking if they could get back to Four Square, and Ruby got bored and went back to her book, and Jon was dragged off to go sit PE in the cafeteria. Again. 

Jon sat and pouted next to the battered and yellowed rugby equipment, desperately wishing that he had one of his books with him. He played with his fingers instead, settling for staring at the ceiling and vividly writing himself into _Howl’s Moving Castle_. Howl wouldn’t have made fun of him. Sophie would beat off all those other dumb kids with her big broom and yell at them. Then she would give him a great, really big hug, and Howl would teach him magic spells, and -

Jon was knee deep in imagining exactly what kind of magic spells Howl would teach him when he heard the click of footsteps across the cement floor. He was so zoned out he didn’t even notice that the footsteps had stopped, and that a short man with a mild face was crouching in front of him, until the man cleared his throat. 

That made him jerk back to attention - partly in shock from the proximity, partly from surprise that Mr. Bouchard was here. But he really shouldn’t have been surprised. Mr. Bouchard always had a way of showing up whenever Jon was in trouble. 

“Trouble again, Jon?” 

Abruptly, Jon felt himself flush. Mr. Bouchard always had a way of making him feel embarrassed and young, as if he was eight instead of twelve. He was practically a teenager, not an unruly puppy. But Mr. Bouchard always talked to him as if he was, and it felt awful and embarrassing. And Mr. Bouchard talked to him a _lot_.

That was Step 2, the other strange thing about Mr. Bouchard: that he cared about Jon a lot. 

Most of the teachers in their school didn’t care. His teachers complained loudly all the time that it was a bad school, that they were underpaid, that the school was underfunded. Sometimes teachers would come in, really young types with bright smiles, but even they either transferred out or got bitter. Jon knew that every kid in the school felt a little as if they weren’t wanted - by their teachers, by the principal, by whatever mysterious and faceless forces seemed to be in charge of making the teachers upset. 

But Mr. Bouchard didn’t care. He always had time for Jon. It…should have been nice, but…

“It wasn’t my fault,” Jon protested weakly. “Allison was talking shi - shiz.”

Mr. Bouchard did that weird half-smile of his, as if what Jon was saying was a little funny, but not overly funny. “I assume protecting your ego is more important than keeping out of trouble.”

Jon stared at him blankly. “Yes?” 

Not protecting your rep was like exposing your belly at a shark. Teachers will wag their fingers and put you in the cafeteria during PE. The other kids, upon sensing weakness, will eat you alive. 

“I see,” Mr. Bouchard said seriously. “It was the same when I was a lad, you know. In my finishing school, a toe out of line would get you whipped.”

“Uh.”

“Maybe we should do that again,” Mr. Bouchard said thoughtfully. “We would have much fewer behavioral problems in this school if we went back to beating children. Of course, I’m fairly sure that corporal punishment and a boarding school creates insane adults.” He winked at Jon, as if he was sharing a secret. “That’s why David Lloyd George was so barmy, you know. There was this one incident with him, my friends, and a pig - well, you’re much too young to know that.”

Jon blinked at Mr. Bouchard. “Wasn’t he the PM in 1910?”

“Was he? How the time flies!” Mr. Bouchard straightened, and Jon had the brief hope that he would be left in peace, before he sat down on the round seat next to Jon. Jon fought a groan. He was going to get lectured for the next five hours, and maybe have the exact time and date of his death injected into his head like jam in a donut. “Listen, Jon. You’ve been acting out quite a bit lately. Is there anything going on at home?”

Oh, great. As if he didn’t know. Jon couldn’t fight a scowl, crossing his arms. “What, you aren’t going to give me the ‘just because your folks are -” His throat closed up unexpectedly, and he tried another tack. “ - don’t live with you, and you’re _such_ a _troubled kid_ , that doesn’t give you the excuse to, like, _actually_ be troubled’ speech?”

“Have I ever given you that speech?” Mr. Bouchard asked mildly, and Jon was forced to admit that he had not. “No, Jon, I think you have the right to your emotions. You’re angry, aren’t you? Bitter? Prone to obsession?” Uh. Jon leaned away a little, but Mr. Bouchard’s pale green eyes were glittering like a beetle’s. “What’s underneath those emotions, Jon? What are you really feeling? It may not be so obvious. Anger is the froth that builds from the whirlpool of sadness. Bitterness can be the mask that desolation wears. You cannot triumph against your emotions until you understand them.”

“You are unbelievably weird,” Jon whispered, incredibly disturbed. 

“So my ex tells me,” Mr. Bouchard said brightly. He stood up, fixing his waistcoat. Jon took a second to reel in disbelief that someone like _that_ would ever score a girl. “I must return to my own lunch break. Next time you must establish your position among the playground hierarchy, Jon, do try to be less obvious. I suggest sabotage or blackmail.”

He walked off, heedless of Jon’s gaping stare, and it was only once he was already out the door that Jon noticed the little tightly folded piece of paper that had fallen out of his pocket. 

Jon dived for it, snatching it off the floor and quickly unfolding it. He opened his mouth to call Mr. Bouchard back, tell him that he had dropped something that probably wasn’t even important, but he found himself closing his mouth and reading the paper instead. 

It was a flyer. Just a boring, normal old flier. In big words written across the top in bold font, Jon read: ‘-∞TH ANNUAL EVILCON.’

Jon stared at the words, trying to make sense of them, failing. He moved on to read what was written below the flyer. 

‘United Kingdom’s Premier Annual Conference on being Evil! Attend and Learn about the most cutting-edge research developments in Evil!! Continuing Education credits available upon request! Free for students! Happy Hour at 5 pm.’

Jon stared at the flyer, attempting to determine if this was the most convoluted prank of all time. He scanned further down the page, finding a big list of presenter names he didn’t know. But they had a short title about the presentations: ‘Architectural Developments in Lonely’, ‘ The Role of the World Wide Web in Evil’, ‘Elevators vs. Ladders: The Ups and Downs’’. 

It was like a bucket of ice water had been dumped over Jon’s head. He found himself blinking, gaping like a fish. By a stroke of luck, a fated accident, Jon had stumbled onto the most important thing of all. This would change the game. This would let Jon stand on a table and shout, and make everybody listen to him: that there _was_ something wrong with Mr. Bouchard, that he was not only a time traveller but an _evil time traveller_ . Now he had a clue to the most important thing: _proof_. 

Jon was going to EvilCon. Mr. Bouchard was an _evil time traveller_ and Jon was going to prove it, once and for all. 

And then everybody would listen to him. 

  
  
  


It was a very simple thing to sneak away from his Gran.

At this point, he couldn’t really even use the word sneaking. All he had to do was wait until he left for her bingo game, scribble a note about how he was out playing footy with friends (Hah.), and grab the bus schedule, map, and handful of pounds and coins as he ran out the door. He didn’t know if there was going to be a ticket fee, or if their snacks were overpriced, so he brought as much money as he could. Fifty pounds should be enough, hopefully. Jon made sure to tuck it into the secret pocket in his jumper and zip it up tight so nobody would steal it, or he wouldn’t lose it. Jon was always losing things. Unless he lost his jacket…

Ugh! No time to worry about this. Jon was on a mission. His notebook was in his left jacket pocket. In his right jacket pocket, he had stashed his most important weapon: a cassette tape recorder that he had gotten for Christmas one year that he barely used, complete with fresh blank tape. It would be vital in securing a confession and that holy grail of proof. 

Jon was forced to admit that, actually, most of the other kids would believe him. Kids didn’t need proof for anything, your story just had to be interesting enough. But to them it would just be a game, something funny that nobody _really_ believed. But Jon believed. And even that wasn’t enough for him: he wanted the _adults_ to believe him. He wanted _Gran_ to believe him. 

And, just maybe, he wanted Mr. Bouchard to believe him. He wanted Mr. Bouchard to know that he had discovered his secret. And then maybe Mr. Bouchard would answer the final question that he had always dodged, finally revealing the secret that he had been so tight lipped about for the past two years: why he cared about Jon so much. 

Nobody cared about Jon. But Mr. Bouchard didn’t seem to care about anybody besides Jon. More than the time travelling, more than being evil - this was the one thing that had never made sense. 

Nobody cared about Jon. Nobody ever had. And nobody ever would. Life had gotten a lot simpler once Jon realized that. 

Jon contemplated Mr. Bouchard’s ulterior motives for caring about him as the bus jumped and lurched their way downtown. The address for the location had been on the back of the flyer, along with a map and parking location. Jon was clutching it now, carefully cross-referencing it with his bus map. Jon was an old hat at the bus system, probably more than most twelve year olds, but today he was vibrating with a nervous energy. This was it. He couldn’t be late. 

It was almost disappointing when they got to the hotel. Because it really was just a hotel, like where every other convention was held. It was downtown, next to the courthouse and across the street from that really good chippy that Gran took Jon to sometimes. It was almost unsettlingly mundane, a familiar corner of Jon’s world turned strange and out of place. It was uncomfortable, and as Jon jammed the stop button and scrambled out he couldn’t fight the goosebumps. 

It was hard to be a twelve year old and not feel like a criminal as he slinked inside the hotel, smudging fingerprints on the fine metal handle and the nice glass doors. He settled for attaching himself to a family, following a few steps behind them but close enough for plausible deniability. 

The lobby was ornate and nice, with lots of people crowded around and tourists in beach gear snapping pictures. Jon hated living in a beach town, hated the stupid tourists, and hated their big smiles and sagging clothing. But they were useful today: he didn’t look so out of place as he stopped in front of the big electronic map in the lobby and squinted at it. 

CONFERENCE FOR AVIATION AND AERONAUTICS, ROOM 5, the map read out. No, that wasn’t it. 

BRITISH ASSOCIATION OF SHOW DOGS, ROOM 8. the line below it said. Definitely not. Jon scowled. How was he supposed to know which one it would be? The map was hardly going to read out ‘EvilCon’...

It took scanning the entire list three times before his eyes caught on something. It was subtle, nestled between the UNITED KINGDOM RUGBY SOCIETY and X-FILES FAN CONVENTION. It read out, simply, LOVECRAFT APPRECIATION SOCIETY. 

Jon was extremely well read, much more so than most his peers. He blinked at the word. Lovecraft. He had read Lovecraft, then promptly stopped reading him once he found that he was the worst sort of person imaginable. But that made perfect sense: Lovecraft was Evil, so of course they would name themselves after their hero! It was like his English teacher having a poster of Shakespeare on their wall. 

The map said that it was in...666. Jon doubted that there were that many rooms in this hotel, but that wasn’t important right now! He carefully wrote down the directions to the room, which Gran always made him do because he wouldn’t remember otherwise, and set off at a run. 

His trainers slapped on the floor, his loose shoelaces bouncing, as Jon wove through the huge hotel. He rode an elevator, found out that the elevator only went to floor three, and had to find another one to take him to floor six. He got turned around five more times, and he ended up turning around in circles so frequently his head started to spin, but Jon persevered. With his directions, his map, and his tenacity, he couldn’t lose!

He couldn’t afford to lose. 

Finally, finally, Jon began to find a crowd. A thin stream of people began winding from the elevator down the hallways, chatting and laughing with each other. Some were carrying suitcases, or mysteriously large duffel bags. Even more importantly, the stream of people were _strange_ : some of them seemed far too tall, as if they were pulled through a taffy puller, and others seemed strangely short and squashed, as if someone had stacked a lot of textbooks on their head and let them shrink. One of them was wearing long white gloves, up to the elbow. Another woman seemed to have thick strands of white in her hair, like cobwebs. It was all incredibly strange, and Jon couldn’t fight the urge to creep closer. 

He had meant to disappear into the crowd, but in this strange crowd he couldn’t possibly hope to fit in. Even the human looking ones had something strange about them, just the same as Mr. Bouchard and his glimmering green eyes. Jon settled for pulling up the hood of his jacket, digging his hands in tight and trying very hard to look like a delinquent. It wasn’t easy, because Jon was a very nice and kind looking boy with big glasses that the other kids said made him look like a bug, but he did his best. 

Finally, they got to a big entryway. Set into the wall there was a glass window with a little granite countertops, like the ticket booths you find in theaters. There was a queue already building up in front of it, and Jon saw that there was someone at the door checking tickets. 

No, not someone - something. It was a mannequin, just like the ones at Harrods. Pure white, with no clothing, and no detail but painted on black eyes and smiling red lips. None of that was so strange - what was _really_ strange was the fact that it was moving. Fluidly, gracefully, as if it was a real person, the mannequin checked tickets and waved cheerily at a grim figure in a frock coat and stovepipe hat who seemed to be dripping dirt. When Jon looked closer, he saw that an identical figure was manning the ticket booth. Jon’s skin prickled with fear. 

He wanted to turn back. Was discovering this secret worth getting turned into a mannequin and being forced to man ticket booths forever? 

If he went home...if he turned back now...no adult would ever believe him, not ever. Not even the other kids would ever really take this seriously, or treat it as more than a game. If he brought home proof, then they might stop thinking of him as weak. They might think of him as strong. 

Maybe some of them might even want to hang out with him.

Resolve bolstered, Jon slid in line and counted out his money. Hopefully it was enough. He wasn’t sure he could slip past the mannequins, which all held the air of eagle-eyed maiden aunts. Somehow, for some reason, he _really_ didn’t want to get on the bad side of the mannequins. 

The queue inched forward, and Jon was in the middle of wondering what would happen if a normie stumbled upon the giant animatronic mannequins when he realized he was standing at the front of the queue. The mannequin smiled down at him, not that it was capable of much else. Jon blinked up at it. 

There was a large sign behind it, where ticket prices normally go. It read out, ‘SHOW ID’. Underneath it, in slightly smaller letters, it read out ‘DISCOUNTS FOR PATRONS OVER 200, ACTIVE DUTY MILITARY, THE DISABLED (NOT RAYNOR), and STUDENTS’. 

“Show ID, please,” the mannequin said, with a deceptively ordinary voice. 

Well, nothing for it. Jon dug his wallet out of his pocket and picked out his school ID. 

“Hello?” Jon creaked out. He carefully slid his school ID across the ticket counter. “I am a - student? In Evil? One ticket, please?”

The mannequin stared at the Student ID, where Jon smiled with his big gap teeth. The mannequin looked at Jon, who was fighting the urge to play with his fingers. 

“Of course!” The mannequin’s painted on black eyes glittered as it flexed its nimble wooden fingers and slid a plastic card attached to a lanyard across the counter, which Jon quickly and eagerly slipped over his neck. “Have a wonderful time, Archivist!”

“Great, thank you!” Jon quickly ran off as fast as he could through the unassuming double doors, determined not to ask what an Archivist was in case he didn’t want to know. He waved his lanyard at the mannequin, ducking between another man in a hoodie who smelled strongly like raw meat, and suddenly he was inside. 

The first word that came to mind was ‘big’. Very, very, very big. The room had no ceiling, just vaulted lights and pipes, and the floor was thin and carpeted in that hotel style. There was a large set at double doors in the very back, and what looked like a passageway to a food court, but those were the only other entrances. The room was, instead, filled up with folding tables in neat, straight rows, with people sitting in folding chairs behind the tables. Some of the tables had trifold boards, and others in the corner had large bookshelves surrounding them, but most of them just seemed to be selling things. It reminded Jon of those bazaars he and Gran would go to where she would inspect handmade jewelry with an experienced eye, or farmer’s markets. 

It was overwhelming, huge, and dazzling. Jon felt overstimulated, his heart pumping a thousand kilometers in his chest, his head dizzy with sight and sound and sensation. It felt as if something extraordinary was within his fingertips, held just out of reach. Something new, a wide untapped world of magic just ready for Jon to sink his fingers in and crack it open, scooping out its insides like it was a Wonder Ball. The world was waiting for Jon, and all he had to do was reach out and _grab_ it. 

It was perfect. 

There was a small folding table next to the door manned by another mannequin (mannequined?), and Jon saw a large sign that read out ‘NAVIGATION’. Jon darted to it, quickly seeing that there were small stacks of programmes, maps, and flyers. There was a small crowd congregated around it, talking loudly, and Jon was forced to worm in between people to try to reach the table. 

“ - honestly, this conference is going to shit,” an old man complained. His shoes were caked in mud. “Since when do we have a _market_?”

“I don’t know,” a much younger person said brightly. Her eyes were tired and bagged, and every time she moved her thick trench coat a layer of dust fell from it. “I like it. You always need to know somebody who knows somebody to find genuine artifacts. Here, it’s all in one place.”

“Putting a bookshelf of _Leitners_ in a crowded room is just asking for trouble -”

“I hear that you can buy Leitners on online websites now,” a third person jumped in eagerly. “Isn’t that something? Get them delivered to your door?”

“Do you not know what eBay is?” the girl asked sympathetically. “Is online delivery novel to you?”

“Come off, you know I’m from ‘95 -”

“Well, just _wait_ until you get to 2017, it’s a riot. You’ll never guess who the Americans have for a President.”

Jon stumbled, but he didn’t have time to process the conversation. He settled for frantically scooping up as many glossy flyers as he could, carefully avoiding the ones that seemed to be in different languages. There was one flyer that read out clearly ‘HOW TO PARTY LIKE IT’S 1999’, and Jon snatched it up. 

He broke from the crowd, holding the flyer up and scrutinizing it carefully. 

_This year’s EvilCon is held in 1999, Bournemouth, England!_ The flyer proclaimed excitedly. Jon squinted. _Here’s what you need to know:_

  * _EvilCon holds a strict nondiscrimination policy. Remember: we are Evil, not rude! Please treat all guests equally regardless of gender expression, race, ethnicity, sexuality, religion, height, dread power, or quantity of insects!_


  * 1999 is a time of great technological innovation! You may see a great deal of reference to something referred to as ‘computers’ and ‘internet’. Please flip to the back of this flyer for a glossary of terms that may be new to certain residents. Communication is key!


  * The timestream is of tantamount importance. Please avoid any references to 2019 and the contents herein. Similarly, all attempts at fulfilling the ‘Hitler Clause’ will be punished with impunity. The Beholding Will Know!


  * As always, tell nobody who is not Marked about EvilCon!


  * ESPECIALLY GERTRUDE ROBINSON


  * Most importantly: have a great time, and enjoy the future/past/all-consuming present!



Hm. 

Jon carefully folded the flyer and stuck it in his back pocket, silently mourning how much paper he was going to have to lug around. Maybe he could ask one of the vendors for a bag? 

He flipped through his other loot, carefully winding around a shambling man in a frock coat. That flyer just raised way more questions than it answered, but it did prove important evidence towards Jon’s time traveller theory.

It wasn’t Mr. Bouchard who was the time traveller - at least, not _just_ Mr. Bouchard.

It was _everyone_.

This EvilCon obviously existed in an area beyond time and space. Judging from the conversation he just heard and this flyer, the visitors inside were from all points in the future and past. He had _really walked past_ someone from 2017! That was the _future_! 

The more Jon thought about it the more excited he got, winding his way through the large area as his lanyard and card thumped against his chest. He could ask people about the 1800s, 1700s, the medieval ages! There had to be people from 2020, 2050, the year 3000! It was all incredibly exciting. Jon wanted to meet a fishman. In 3000 they were all living underwater, right? Would next year’s EvilCon be held _underwater_?

...how did they have an annual EvilCon when it existed beyond time and space?

Whatever. Jon was focusing. If he strained up on his tiptoes and looked through the crowd, he saw the most wonderful and eclectic collection of people. Men in frock coats and stovepipe hats like they were from the Victorian era, women in long Jane Austen dresses like they were from the Regency period. There was even a gross looking man wearing what looked like Centurion armor! Were there dinosaurs? _Were there evil dinosaurs???_

No! He was focusing! He had to keep his eye on the prize! Jon knew that Mr. Bouchard was somewhere in here, and it was his job to find him. Once he found Mr. Bouchard he could run around and find out everything that had ever happened or would ever happen in human history, and discover the evil plot of everybody evil, but for right now he had to _focus_. 

The only issue was that there were a _lot_ of people in EvilCon. 

Jon felt like an idiot. The convention held throughout all time and space _obviously_ had a ton of people. But that made it awfully hard to find Mr. Bouchard. He would need help. Surely everybody here knew each other, right?

His Gran had told him years ago that whenever he got lost (frequently), to go ask for help from an employee. Jon never actually did, because he hated asking for help from anybody, but he did have a deep seated trust of authority figures who were not evil time travellers, so he figured it was worth a shot. He didn’t see any hotel employees, and he really really really didn’t want to talk to any of the mannequins, so a vendor would do. 

A likely candidate was sitting behind a folding plastic table, sagging with telescopes and spy glasses. Every sort was spread out on the thin plastic table covering: miniature little telescopes, extending spy glasses coated in bronze, and very strange glasses that reflected the light in a way that sent Jon’s eyes spinning. The man behind it, an adult man with dreamy blue eyes and khakis that kind of looked like he should be in a PTO meeting, was chatting amiably with a customer who was looking through one of the miniature telescopes. On the ground beside him were boxes of much larger ones, and set to the side were full-size telescopes that looked very cool and very expensive. Jon carefully sidled up, hovering near the corner of the table. He kept distance from the large telescopes - no way he could afford to pay for one if he broke it. 

“ - yeah, you’ll want the TX100 model for that,” the man was saying to the customer. “If you’re giving them out to astronomy students, they’ll be thankful for anything cheap. I once got a whole cohort like that, locked them on a roof for 24 hours and called it a study group. You could probably ask Kilbride about that method, it’s usually pretty good.”

Jon waited impatiently for the adults to get over their weirdly boring conversation. Was this guy’s definition of evil giving college students free telescopes and locking them on a roof? Lame. 

After the customer bought a pair of buzzing binoculars and walked away, freaking forever later, the man behind the table finally noticed Jon. He smiled, extremely fakely, at Jon. Jon noticed for the first time that he was wearing a nametag, that said ‘WALKER FAIRCHILD, 2003, VAST’. Actually, most people were wearing name tags. Whoops. 

“Hullo, kid. Dark, right?” At Jon’s slightly offended squint, he quickly said, “You’re from the Dark, right? That’s the only kind of kids we get around here, mostly.”

Oh. Jon quickly resolved to lie his ass off. “Yep, that’s me. Dark. Anyway, would you happen to know where a Mr. -” Oh no. What was Mr. Bouchard’s first name. It was on the tip of his tongue…”Elias! Mr. Elias Bouchard is?”

The man blanched. “Why do you want to know?”

Jon nodded, having expected this. Even the other evil people thought Mr. Bouchard was scary. “He’s, uh - my Uncle?”

The man stared blankly at him. “Why would Elias have a nephew from the Dark?”

Jon might be in over his head. He hadn’t realized today would involve so much lying. Luckily, Jon was a master liar. All twelve year olds were. “He locked me in the closet a lot as a kid. Look, do you know where he is?”

But the man just shrugged - a little incredulous, but he seemed to have bought Jon’s cover story, and that was the important thing. “I actively avoid the man, honestly. Sorry, kid. But I doubt he lost you. Man’s never lost a thing in his life. He definitely knows where you are.”

That was not as reassuring as the man probably thought it was. 

Jon squeaked out a bye, and ran off quickly. He stopped by another table nearby, which sold paintings that made Jon feel very dizzy and seemed to be manned by a sister or a cousin of the Fairchild guy. After another interrogation of why exactly he was there, Jon quickly ran back to the entrance to find another folding card table. He grabbed a market and wrote in his best, cleanest script, ‘JOHN - DARK - 1999.’ 

He peeled it off and stuck it firmly on his zippered jacket. There. That way the evil monsters didn’t have his real name _and_ he looked like he fit in. John-with-an-H was _really different_ from Jon-short-for-Jonathan, _Ms. Reddings_.

The next table Jon found himself drifting to was filled with figurines and action figures, which was appealing to Jon. Gran never bought him action figures, just books. But when Jon got closer, he found that all of the action figures were...uh…

They were all women. In, uh, various states of, er, undress. With big…

Jon was much too young for this. He hadn’t even hit his growth spurt yet. Besides, some of the little figurines had moving eyes, and seemed to have mouths parted in silent screams. A woman with sawdust poking out of her shoulder was messing around on a little screen that beeped, like a weird GameBoy, and Jon found himself sidling up to a very tall man with a big, bushy beard wearing a very heavy coat with a very funny hat. His coat had a peeling nametag stuck on the wool, but it was completely blank. He was holding one of the figurines, inspecting it closely. The figurine vibrated with silent screams. 

The woman behind the table seemed very disinterested, so Jon tried the large man instead. “Excuse me,” Jon said, as politely as he physically could. When the Captain Haddock look-alike didn’t look up, Jon repeated, “Excuse me?”

The man looked at Jon. His eyes were pale blue, icy and cold and far away. It made Jon shiver. “Oh, look. A child.”

“I’m a teenager,” Jon corrected, because it was almost true. “Have you seen a -”

“Why is a child talking to me,” the man complained, somehow in exactly the same mildly polite tone he had used to recognize Jon. “I really do hate children, you know.”

“I’m sure children hate you too,” Jon said back, before he could stop himself. 

The man stared at him. He was very, very large. Jon stared back, although he hadn’t hit his growth spurt yet. Jon bet that when he did, he would be as tall as the man. Taller, even. 

“I really,” the man said, “ _really_ , hate children.”

He lifted his left hand, a busty anime figure held in his right, and snapped his fingers. 

And then Jon was far away. 

  
  
  


“Ew, a boy.”

“Don’t be rude. It’s not his fault.”

“Yeah, but there’s _only_ boys. I want a girl. And don’t you _dare_ say girls aren’t scary.”

“I’m terrified of girls! Have you _met_ my Ma?”

“Your Ma’s a pussy - oh, he’s waking up.”

Jon opened his eyes. 

The second thing he saw was a large, primary school friendly sign with letters shaped like building blocks that read out ‘KIDDY CORNER’. There was a hip skateboarding dog in the corner. The third thing he noticed was that he was lying on those foam interlocking mats, as you would find in a real pre-school. The fourth thing he noticed was those large wooden maze toys, like you found at doctor’s offices. 

The first thing he noticed was the boy and girl crouched over him. 

Jon rocketed upwards - since when had he been lying down? - almost flying into the two kids. Because they were kids - neither of them could be any older than he was. Of course Jon was, like, almost a teenager, but still. 

It was a boy and a girl. The girl was white and wore a cute, flowy maxi dress with flowers painted on. She had long red hair, a roundish face, and a smattering of freckles on the bridge of her nose. The boy was white too, with slightly curled light blonde hair. He wore all black, with a baggy hoodie and stylish baggy jeans with giant trainers. 

They stared at him. Jon stared back. 

Somehow, Jon found that the first question that came out of his mouth was, “Are you guys evil?”

“Yes,” the girl said immediately.

“No,” the boy said, simultaneously with the girl. 

“If you aren’t evil then why are you here?” Jon asked the boy, who seemed a little offended at the question. 

“I _hunt_ evil things,” the boy said, with a strange mix of pride and sarcasm. “That makes me a good guy.”

The girl rolled her eyes as Jon frowned. “Should you really be saying that so loudly?”

“I can take anybody here,” the boy bragged insecurely. “This guy’s just Dark, right? What’s he going to sic on me, the Tooth Fairy?”

Jon began to wonder if he had accidentally impersonated a baby monster who wielded the forces of childhood playground stories against the unwilling. Dark people could probably stab everyone else with, like, the powers of their mind, and make a bunch of blood and guts and the small intestine come out. Jon slowly warmed to the idea. 

“Yeah,” he said, submitting to the powerful twelve year old boy urge to challenge the other twelve year old boy for dominance, “and if you aren’t careful I’ll get Barney to rip your _head_ off.”

“Ignore him,” another voice said, “he’s just a liar.”

Whoops. The voice came from behind him, and Jon craned his head backwards. Sitting on a cushion with his back to the wall was another white kid, with longish dark brown hair swept over his eyes. He was mashing buttons on what looked like two controllers attached to a large, flat screen. The back read ‘Nintendo’. Jon was _really_ excited for the GameBoys of the future. 

But when Jon craned his head, he caught sight of the boy’s nametag. ‘Callum Brodie - Dark - 2019’. 

Uh oh. Busted. Jon flushed, gripping the denim of his jeans before forcibly relaxing his hand, as the boy looked up from his futuristic game device. He narrowed his eyes at Jon, as if he was faintly familiar but difficult to place. “You ain’t Dark,” Callum Brodie said flatly. “I can smell it on ya. I don’t think you’re much of _anything_.”

Goes to freaking show that, even in an evil convention full of evil people, the other kids were _still_ making fun of him. “Whatever,” Jon sulked. “Fine. Who cares. I snuck in, I don’t know what this place is, and my name’s Jonathan Sims. Happy?”

Both the girl and the boy looked fairly impressed by this, which made Jon feel a little bit better, but the Dark boy had a strange reaction. His eyes widened, and his breathing abruptly sped up, as if he was scared. He jammed his game in his jeans and stood up very quickly, almost stumbling. 

“I - gotta go. Uh, Raynor’s - um, calling me. Bye. Nice to meet you, Jon!”

He practically ran off. Jon and the other kids watched him jump over the very small, waist high fence, which seemed more to keep the kids in than the adults out, and run off into the crowd. Jon was extremely uncertain of how to process this turn of events. Was there a wanted poster with his name on it? Was there a flyer with a list of undesirables on it, and Jon’s name at the very top? What was going on?

But then the girl turned back to him, her soft eyes lit up, and Jon realized for the first time that her eyes were a sickly yellow. “You just scared _Callum Brodie_ . That jerk’s a full-fledged, powerful, _demonic_ Avatar. He’s from 2019, everyone from 2019 is insane. But _you_ scared him off. With just your _name_.”

“Who _are_ you?” the boy asked, with badly hidden interest. 

Jon began sweating. He didn’t know how to admit that he wasn’t really anybody, and that he never had been. Jon was a normal kid in a crazy, special, magic place. That was all he was, and all he would ever be. 

“I’m just Jonathan Sims,” Jon said lamely. “I’m nobody.”

“Obviously not,” the girl said confidently. She stuck out her hand. “Agnes Montague, Princess of the Desolation, Messiah of the Eternal Flame, prophesied to subsume the world in fire and flame. That’s Gerry, he’s boring.”

Gerry huffed. “ _I’m_ Gerard Keay and I’m a rogue demon hunter.”

“What’s a rogue demon?” Jon asked. 

“My cultists dragged me here,” Agnes continued, as if she hadn’t heard him. If Jon squinted at her curled nametag, he could make out that she was from the ‘Desolation’ and her year was - wow, 1962? Wow! Gerry’s nametag read out his name, but the only other thing it had was the year - 1997. Only two years older than him. Ugh, he was probably secretly fourteen. As if Jon would hang out with a _fourteen year old_. “But they got mad that I kept on threatening to blow up all those boring tables and all their boring friends, so they dumped me here. Gerry’s Mum dumped him here too. Who dumped you here?”

Here, as in, the Kiddy Corner. Jon looked around some more. It really was just a little pen set into the corner with some playmats, not fun looking toys. He saw some wooden blocks, and a bouncy ball. There was a game of jacks in the corner, and some battered antique looking board games shoved under a table. Was this place for four year olds? Jon was deeply offended. 

“Ma just came to buy some books,” Gerry said mournfully. “She drags me here _every_ year and it’s always boring. It’s just a bunch of old people talking about Newest Developments in Fear and someone insisting that the invention of the telephone is the greatest thing since sliced bread.”

“I dunno who dumped me here,” Jon said uncomfortably. “It was some...tall guy, who looked like Captain Haddock. He said that he hates children.” 

To his surprise, Gerry nodded solemnly. “That’ll be Peter Lukas,” Gerry volunteered. “My Ma works with him sometimes. He’s the kind that thinks kids shouldn’t be seen and shouldn’t be heard.”

“What a tosser,” Jon proclaimed. Agnes and Gerry nodded. Peter Lukas did, indeed, sound like a tosser. 

“Gerry knows everybody,” Agnes informed Jon proudly. Gerry fiddled with his jacket sleeve. “His Mum’s like my cultists, they’re always training us to take over their stupid family buisnesses. But Gerry travels all over, so he’s always meeting _everyone_. We met, like, three EvilCons ago, and we’ve been hanging out ever since. He’s pretty cool.”

“Not as cool as you being able to set everything on fire,” Gerry muttered.

Despite himself, Jon found his heart hurting a little. Of course. These two were weirdly friendly, but they were friends with each other first. Soon they’d start ignoring him so they could hang out with each other. Jon wasn’t really good at hanging out. “That’s cool. That you can set stuff on fire, I mean. I wish I could set things on fire.”

“It’s pretty great,” Agnes agreed. But then she narrowed her eyes at Jon, as if she was sizing him up. “But _you_ can scare off even Callum Brodie. I bet if we broke out of here with _you_ , nobody would dare throw us back in here.”

Abruptly, Jon began sweating. “Peter Lukas threw me back in here just fine.”

“If you can scare off the 2019s, you can scare off anybody,” Agnes said confidently. She scrambled to her feet, propping her hands on her waist, and Gerry and Jon scrambled up after her. Jon could already tell who was going to be the ringleader here. “You help us break free of this prison, and we help you - why are you here?”

“I’m looking for Elias Bouchard,” Jon said. “He’s my History teacher and I’m trying to prove that he’s evil.”

“Elias?” Agnes wrinkled his nose. “That’s the Director of the Magnus Institute after James Wright, right?”

“Director?” Gerry looked a little alarmed at this. “I thought he worked in filing. Emma’s always complaining about him.”

“I thought he taught History,” Jon confessed. But he steeled himself, tried to look cool and dangerous, as if he really was somebody who was dangerous and cool and belonged - at EvilCon, and with Gerry and Agnes. “I’ll break us out of here. Come on, no time to waste!”

Their plan to break out of Kiddy Corner was innovative, complex, and dangerous. 

They jumped the fence. 

“Well!” Agnes said brightly, propping her hands on her hips again. “That worked. What next?”

“I’ve just been wandering around and asking people if they’ve seen him,” Jon volunteered. “But that hasn’t been working that well…”

“Doesn’t hurt to try,” Gerry said diplomatically. 

Somehow, it felt different wandering around EvilCon with people that Jon...well, he didn’t know them, but they were his age and he was relatively sure that they weren’t bad people, which is more than he could say for almost anybody else here. Despite what Gerry insisted, Jon was 100% sure that both he and Agnes were completely evil, but that probably didn’t mean that you were a bad person. Maybe being Evil was a day job, or a hobby: something you did for a few hours each day, before you went home to your wife and kids or whatever. Despite the bizarre circumstances, this convention really did seem just like any other hobbyist convention. 

Agnes overshared in long and meandering rambles about her tragic childhood being raised by cult members, being placed in a half-way house for troubled teens, and never getting her Easy Bake Oven. But somehow Jon got the impression that maybe some of them didn’t even choose it. Neither of them seemed to want to be here: both dragged by their parents, both slightly surly that they were being forced to participate in something they didn’t care about or want to be involved in. 

It made Jon feel a little self-conscious about his own excitement. Agnes and Gerry were _cool_ . The mystical and strange and fantastic was everyday, humdrum, and boring. This was, so far, the most exciting day of Jon’s life, and Agnes was _bored_. 

“I mean, you’ve set one person on fire, you’ve set them all on fire,” Agnes bragged, as they hovered near a table that seemed to sell nothing but shovels. They were all caked with dirt, grime, and something unidentifiable. Some of them had dark stains. “Honestly, it’s all so boring. Everyone’s all like - Agnes, destroy the world. Agnes, raze the earth in a maelstrom of fire and death. Agnes, crash the economy. As if I _care_?”

“Uh huh,” Jon said, once again reminded of why this place was called EvilCon. 

“World’s not dead in 1997,” Gerry said mildly, inspecting a short shovel covered with something slimy. “So, like, I don’t think you did a very good job?”

“Whatever.” Agnes tossed her hair. “I don’t want the world to die until we get that Spice Girls thing Gerry told me about. I want to be Ginger Spice!”

“I like Scary Spice!” Jon said heatedly. 

Jon debated the Spice Girls with the Anti-Christ until Gerry got bored and dragged them both away. When Jon saw a big table with lots of boxes and bookshelves surrounding it he tried to run towards it, enraptured by the promise of literacy, and Agnes and Gerry had to grab him by his jacket hood and physically yank him back. 

“Do you _want_ to die, New Kid?” Gerry hissed. “Books are dangerous! Ma doesn’t even let me touch any, and she doesn’t give a shit if I live or die!”

“How are books dangerous,” Jon asked crossly, wriggling free of Gerry’s grip, Agnes was nodding behind him, as if this was common knowledge. “They’re just books.”

“Those,” Gerry said dramatically, sweeping out a hand, “are _Leitners_. And there’s nothing more dangerous.”

Jon’s first impulse was to scoff. Books are books. But his heart thumped in his chest, his palms breaking out into an instinctive cold sweat - his body remembering before his mind. Remembering the worst thing that had ever happened to him - worse than any hospital, any cold goodbyes. 

“Mr. Spider,” Jon breathed. 

Bizarrely, Agnes looked impressed. “You’ve seen a Leitner before? I thought you were a normie.”

“Stop letting Callum Brodie teach you slang,” Gerry told Agnes severely, before turning back to Jon. “Have you heard of Leitners before?”

Jon couldn’t fight the shiver. “I survived one.”

For the first time, Gerry looked a little grim, and he let go of Jon’s jacket. “Tell us everything.”

“Nobody’s ever believed me…” Jon said weakly.

But Gerry just gave him a crooked smile, brandishing a hand to encompass the whole room: the strange people, the influx of times and places, the dangerous and thrilling. “Trust me, Jon. _You_ are hardly the weirdest thing in this place. Whatever you say, we’ll believe it.”

That was how Jon found himself crouched behind an abandoned folding card table, spilling everything that happened to Agnes and Gerry. He fought hard not to cry, because there was no way he was crying in front of a girl, but he couldn’t fight the way his throat closed up. As if even his own body knew that it was dangerous to say what he saw out loud, as if by putting it into words then it would find him. 

But it was a relief too. Like cutting open a wound and letting the poison out, or the sting of antiseptic on a wound before it cooled, the hurt felt good. Jon struggled to remember the word he had read in a book once - cathartic. It felt cathartic.

Hurt built and built, until it rose so high it choked. But sometimes, revisiting hurt helped it drain out. It felt like he was putting something down that he hadn’t even known he was carrying. 

“That’s the Web, alright,” Gerry said grimly, after Jon had finished. “Maybe that’s why Callum was scared of you.”

“Because I survived?”

“People who get hit by the gods -”

“Entities,” Gerry corrected primly. 

Agnes rolled her eyes. “Entities early in life tend to be marked. It’s like when you press a fork in your peanut butter cookies before you put them in the oven, and after you bake them you have a nice cross-hatch.”

“Uh,” Jon said. This wasn’t explaining what an Entity was, but Jon didn’t say that he didn’t know, in case it made him sound stupid or uncool.

“So if you got marked as a kid, that explains everything,” Agnes said confidently. “That’s why you were able to walk in here, you got all that supernatural juice in you. I bet you grow up to be a super cool Avatar of the Web or something.”

“Web’s spiders,” Gerry said helpfully. “So many spiders. Infinite spiders.”

“I hate spiders,” Jon said weakly.

“Yeah, that’ll probably do it,” Gerry said, nodding wisely. Jon hated this. “I bet you five quid in ten years you’re going to be this super cool god of spiders and everyone’ll have to do what you say.”

Jon felt sick. He didn’t want to be the god of spiders. He hated spiders, and he never wanted to think about them again. He never wanted to even _see_ one again. If he became the god of spiders, would he be evil? What did they mean by the god of spiders? There was only one God, that was the whole point of God. 

Maybe Agnes recognized the look on his face, because she supportively reached out and clapped him on the shoulder. Her touch was surprisingly hot, like a ray of sun in June. “Think of it this way,” she encouraged. “When you’re king of spiders, you won’t be afraid of spiders anymore. Everyone else will be afraid of _you_.”

“And you’ll have superpowers,” Gerry volunteered.

Jon thought about this.

“I do want superpowers,” he grudgingly admitted. “Even if they’re evil superpowers.”

He didn’t want to be king of spiders, who probably weren’t very good subjects. But Gerry said that everyone had to do what kings of spiders said. They had to listen to them. They would believe them, and respect them, and think they’re smart...

“Trust me,” Agnes said, her yellow eyes glimmering with a strange, flickering light, “when you can kill anything you want with your mind, you aren’t afraid of _anything_.”

And to Jon, who was afraid of everything - of spiders, of death, of being alone, of other kids, of uni, of retirement homes - that seemed very appealing indeed.

Something occurred to Jon, and he frantically dug through his large pockets to drag out a folded piece of paper. He quickly unfolded it, finding one of the programmes for the events happening later that day. It was a list of presentations, all of which sounded very academic and cool, but Jon eagerly scanned the list for one presentation in particular. He whooped when he found it, jamming one finger at the line as Gerry and Agnes craned their heads to look. 

“World Wide Web and the Web,” Jon said triumphantly, “by Annabelle Cane. That has to be spiders, right? Maybe if I can talk with her, she can tell me about the superpowers!” He faltered. “Do you guys know Annabelle Cane? She sounds important…”

But Agnes and Gerry just glanced at each other, shaking their heads. “Sounds after my time,” Gerry volunteered. “Ma makes me memorize lists of all of the big time players in the supernatural scene, but I’ve never heard of her. But it’s worth a shot?”

“And I’m sure that the Director of the Magnus Institute would be watching all of the presentations,” Agnes added. “We can find Elias there too!”

“Then let’s go!” Jon cried. He found himself growing excited again - excited at the prospect of a mystery, excited as the prospect of things going _right_. He stood up, ducking out from behind the table and withdrawing the map of the conference. The presentation room was to the far left. They could get there no problem, and find Annabelle Cane, and find Elias Bouchard, and everything would make sense - and Jon could find out why he was here, find out his place in this, find out if he was really meant for something after all. 

But then he faltered, second guessing himself. He bit his lip and glanced back at Agnes and Gerry, who were quickly standing up too. Agnes was readjusting her dress, and Gerry was digging his hands into his hoodie. “Uh. Thanks for your help, guys. But you don’t have to...I mean, you don’t have to keep helping. I can, uh, do the rest by myself. I think.”

Strangely, Gerry looked a little hurt. “Do you want us to go?”

“No!” Jon burst out, way too frantically. God, way to sound pathetic, Jonathan. “I mean, you’re both really nice. Uh, like, almost too nice -”

“I’ve been talking about setting a lot of people on fire this whole time,” Agnes said warily. 

But Jon just shrugged. “Eddie in Maths talks about setting people on fire a lot too and he’s okay. You guys aren’t, like, weird. Or you are weird. But in a good way. Weird like I am.” He was babbling. He was babbling, and sounding like an idiot, and he wanted to die. “But, like, I’m weird in the bad way, so maybe not weird like I am -”

“Jon.” Agnes frowned at him, before reaching out and clapping both hands on his shoulders. Both of his shoulders immediately grew uncomfortably hot. “This is networking. When I grow up I’m going to be Flame Princess of the world and you will be spider king. Every other evil person we know is really lame and evil, so it’ll be cool to hang out with someone who’s not lame. We can team up to make everybody sad with flames and spiders.”

“Is the goal to make people sad?” Jon asked anxiously.

“It’s not called HappyCon,” Gerry pointed out. “But there’s nothing fun to do here anyway, Jon, so don’t worry about it.” He shrugged uncomfortably. “I don’t exactly have a lot of friends either. I don’t know any other kids. Even adults think I’m weird.”

“But you’re so cool!” Jon said heatedly. “You know so much about stuff and you’re wearing all black!”

Gerry flushed. “You really think the black is cool?”

“So cool!”

Then Jon’s hoodie started melting, so Agnes had to let go of him. But a part of him missed the warmth. “Then let’s go,” Agnes said authoritatively. “When’s Annabelle’s talk?”

Jon consulted his flyer. “3:00pm.” He checked his clunky electronic watch. “Which is...fifteen minutes ago! Shit! Let’s run!”

They set off at a sprint throughout the room, ducking and weaving between adults. Some of them were dressed strangely, in tight jeans and off-the shoulder gauzy shirts, and others were dressed like they were from a period piece. Women with long skirts glided across the floor, talking between them of amazing things, and a flurry of languages and experiences and strangeness whirled around them. At one point Gerry grabbed his hand, just to keep track of him in the crowd, and Agnes grabbed Gerry’s hand, and they towed each other through the winding paths. 

They ducked between booths, apologizing quickly and loudly to the offended adults they almost bowled over. Some of them seemed to recognize Agnes, making a swipe for her, and others eyed Gerry warily, but it was like Jon was invisible. He didn’t pay attention, and he didn’t mind. He was a tourist in this space, magical and strange, intimidating and evil and probably malevolent, but there was a beauty in that undirected malevolence. A sacred promise. 

It was full of weird people, but Jon was weird too. 

By the time they careened into the presentation room, they were out of breath and laughing. It was another big room, but it was smaller than the one they just came from. Square and boring, it had a small stage at the front with a podium and a screen. Jon didn’t see a projector, just a strange box, but he reasoned that mystical monsters had other ways of giving presentations. Jon realized, with a crushing disappointment, that the stage was empty. 

Agnes put a finger to her lips, and guided them all into empty chairs in the very back of the room. They all clamored on the stiff and uncomfortable chairs, putting their hands in their laps trying to look as attentive as possible, but within seconds they had ducked their heads together to whisper. 

“We missed her,” Jon hissed. “How are we going to find her now?”

“There’s usually mingling afterwards,” Agnes whispered back. “We can catch her then.” 

“Do we know what she looks like?” Gerry asked. 

Agnes gently hit him on the head. “We’ll find the woman with eight arms, dunkass!”

“Don’t hit me!”

Jon squinted at the programme. “Who’s up next…’How To Tender Your Resignation’, by the Archivist...ugh, that sounds so boring.”

“We would have gotten here on time if you didn’t trip on your untied shoelaces for your big clown shoes,” Agnes hissed. 

“They’re called _Vans_ and you don’t understand _fashion_ -”

“1997 fashion makes me want to never live that long. I am going to end the world before the year 2000, and that is a promise -”

“Okay, Ms. Y2K -”

“Shut up!” Jon hissed. “Someone’s walking on stage!”

Someone was, indeed, walking on stage. They were very generic, and just seemed to be there to adjust the podium, but when they tapped the microphone the sound reverberated throughout the room. Jon recognized that the person was probably acting as the host, to introduce the next speaker and give background and stuff. 

“Up next is a short presentation on a grassroots initiative by a representative of the Beholding and the Hunt. Please welcome Mr. Jonathan Sims, the Archivist, and Ms. Daisy Tonner, as they present their presentation ‘How to Tender Your Resignation’.”

Everybody clapped politely. A man, followed by a woman, walked on stage, shaking the hand of the host before the host walked off. Gerry and Agnes were staring at Jon. Jon couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t understand.

The man was familiar. He was very far away, and Jon’s vision wasn’t so good, but from what Jon could make out he was so familiar. He was tall and lanky, like a gawky and awkward scarecrow, but was dressed finely in well-cut trousers, dark red dress shirt, and a thin white silk jacket. His hair was like Jon’s, but instead of short and fuzzy twists it was incredibly long, down to his shoulders. Part of it was tied up but most of it was left to cascade down his shoulders. Gran would have had a heart attack. 

He looked a little like Jon. Same nose, same intense and focused expression, same thin lips. His face was much longer and narrower, thin and sharp where baby fat still clung to Jon’s cheeks. He looked like...he looked like…

The woman next to him was white, and very short. She barely came up to the man’s shoulders. Her light blonde hair, much lighter and straighter than Gerry’s, was pulled into a short and spunky ponytail with long strands left free, and she was wearing a beige turtleneck with long sleeves and leggings. She was just as thin as the man, and had long and ropy scars stretching across her face. She wasn’t very feminine at all, but something about her looked very kind. 

“Oh my god,” Jon whispered, “it’s my Dad.”

Gerry and Agnes looked at Jon, alarmed. The man was still fiddling with the microphone, so Gerry leaned in. “Are you serious? You’re a junior?”

“I don’t know,” Jon said heatedly. “I forgot his name! But - but he has the same name as me, and he kind of looks like me, and Gran always says I look just like my Dad! It has to be him! He’s all skinny just like Dad was before...he’s my Dad, I know it!”

“Then who’s the lady?” Agnes whispered, eyes wide as dinner plates. “Are they friends?”

When Jon looked at the lady, his heart did a weird and strange thing, and something deep in him hurt. She really did look kind. “Maybe it’s my Mum,” Jon whispered. Agnes’ jaw dropped in shock. “She could be!” Jon said defensively. “My Gran doesn’t got any pictures of her. And Gran always hated her...she looks like someone Gran would hate!”

“But…”

“People are biracial, Agnes,” Gerry said condescendingly. “Read Rule 1 of Evilcon.”

“Quiet, he’s talking!” Jon hissed, and the two shut up.

Meanwhile, his Dad ( _his Dad!_ !) was clearing his throat awkwardly. “Hello, everybody,” Dad said into the microphone. Nobody said hello back. The room was dead quiet, almost strangely so. Normally when someone boring was presenting, at least _someone_ was talking. But it was dead quiet. “Thank you all for coming to my presentation. This is - well, it isn’t my _first_ time at EvilCon, but it’s the first time like this.” He laughed nervously. “You all know who I am. I’ve probably haunted the nightmares of - oh, a fair percentage of this audience. Sorry about that.”

His Mom pinched the bridge of his nose. Gran did that _all the time_ when talking to Jon!

But then Dad sobered, looking over the audience, and somehow his gaze was piercing. Somehow, it felt as if it landed directly on Jon, as if it was seeing him. Jon felt as if he was pierced through, flayed alive, with an oppressive attention bearing down on him. 

Like someone’s attention was entirely on him. He hadn’t felt that since Dad died. 

“How many of you want to be here?” Dad asked. 

The room was quiet. 

“Thought so.” Dad breathed in, and out, and something about him seemed to quiet, as if he had found some sort of resolve. “We all chose this life. But choice is such a funny thing. It can mean so much, and so little. Implicit in a choice, I believe, is the capability to make another choice. One choice made - in a moment of weakness, or fright, or terror - should not define us for the rest of our unnaturally extended lives. Choices made to save our lives should not doom us. Choices made to save our lives should not doom others. We _do_ have the freedom to change our fates. We are powerful, touched by forces beyond mortal ken, but our power is meaningless if we cannot even help ourselves.” Dad coughed. “Anyway, so that’s why Daisy and I started Monsters Anonymous.”

Whatever he said next, Jon didn’t pay attention, because he was starstruck. 

Jon remembered Dad. He did. He remembered his smile, and being picked up, and all of his cameras. Dad loved cameras, with all of their fiddly bits and mysterious little pieces. Dad had a trombone, but he wasn’t any good at playing it. Dad liked football. His favorite were the Rovers, because he was from Doncaster. 

But Jon didn’t remember Dad before the cancer very well. All he left behind were things, and empty spaces. Gran taking him to and from school, Uncle Rob with Dad at the hospital. They only let Jon into the hospital sometimes, when Uncle Rob was saying that Dad was doing real well and wanted to see him. But Dad never seemed to be doing well to Jon. He just drooled and tried to say things but didn’t say them very well. He always smiled at Jon, though. 

Here, Dad was saying things perfectly. He sounded so smart, and he was standing, and it was like Jon had never met somebody so amazing in his life. Somebody who spoke so passionately, who was so real, who was here. 

Dad, as Jon remembered him, was never _here_. But Jon had found him: strange and out of place, on top of a stage in EvilCon, speaking passionately about something that Jon didn’t understand. 

“ - we understand it’s dangerous, but our intention is to provide another option for those who wish to take up the mantle of ‘Do No Harm’.” Dad coughed slightly. “I turn it over now to my partner, Daisy Tonner.”

He stepped aside to let the woman - his _partner_ , it _had_ to be his Mum, it was his _Mum_ \- stand in front of the microphone. After a second, Dad quickly lowered the microphone by a third of a meter. 

“I have killed,” Mum said, clearly and deliberately, and Jon realized dazedly that she was Welsh. Jon was half Welsh? Why had nobody told him? This changed everything. “So many people. That I should not have killed. You have probably killed people that did not deserve it. You should not have done it. I should not have done it. It is possible to stop doing this. Thanks.”

Dad quickly took the microphone back. “Right. So our proposal for the self-help group follows the model of a, ah, traditional support group -”

“Wow,” Gerry whispered, “Jon, your Mum’s like, a serial killer.”

That made Jon check back in. “She is? No she isn’t. She’s my Mum.”

“It’s okay,” Gerry said quickly, “Mums kill people like it’s their job or something. It’s very normal.”

“My Mum killed my Dad,” Agnes added. 

“Brill,” Jon said. 

For the rest of the presentation, Jon could barely pay attention. He was too focused on memorizing everything about the duo: the color of Mum’s hair, Dad’s sure and confident posture. Dad had never seemed tall in that hospital bed, but he stood tall now. This was something that Jon had never had, but he had it now. 

Jon wasn’t paying attention, but when he glanced at Agnes he saw that she was enraptured. For a moment he was confused - did she want parents as cool as his? He wasn’t sharing - but it took him a second to realize that she was paying attention to what Mum and Dad was saying. Something about their strange speech on...being ex-evil was resounding with her.

It was strange, that a girl who proudly called herself Princess of the Desolation was staring at the people advocating against hurting others with such wide eyes. When Jon glanced at Gerry, who was chewing on his hoodie string, he saw that Gerry’s eyes were wide too. Mum’s short speech about how to break free of the cycle of violence and resume normality seemed to hit something in him, and for the first time something that looked almost like hope bloomed in Gerry’s expression.

Jon realized, in that moment, that he had been spending this entire trip wanting to be like these people. Wanting to be special, exciting, powerful. But to Gerry and Agnes, to Mum and Dad, the best thing you could possibly be was normal.

Maybe Jon didn’t understand as much as he thought. 

“You don’t have to be Evil,” Dad finished up, voice tense with passion. “You only have to be you. And you, who you are, is not evil. You’re just a person, in the worst kind of circumstances. You can change. We want to help you change. Thank you very much for your time.”

And, just like that, it was over. The audience did not clap. Silence stretched over the room, but Mum and Dad didn’t seem to care. They just walked off the stage, as if it didn’t even matter, and walked towards the small exit door for speakers at the wall to the left of the podium. 

Before Jon knew it, he had jumped up. They were getting away. What if they left now, and left the convention, and he never saw them again?

“They’re leaving,” Jon hissed, grabbing Gerry’s wrist and trying to tug him up. “Let’s go, we can still catch them -”

“Maybe we shouldn’t,” Gerry said anxiously, stopping Jon short. “Look, Jon, even if that is your Dad, that’s the _Head Archivist_. I know those sorts. They’re -”

“My Dad’s _dead_ ,” Jon hissed, and Gerry abruptly shut up. “He’s _dead_ but he’s _here_ and if I just - if I can just _talk_ to him then I can tell him he has brain cancer and we can catch it in time and he’ll be okay!”

Both Agnes and Gerry stared at him. 

“My Da died under mysterious circumstances,” Gerry volunteered. 

“My Mother killed my Father and exploded into flames upon giving birth to me,” Agnes volunteered. 

Jon stared at the two other kids, confronted for the first time with other children who also had comically tragic backstories, before he remembered that they were on a time limit. He let go of Gerry’s hand, turning away from them. 

“Then I’ll go by myself. I can’t let them get away again!”

And, without looking back, Jon dashed out into the aisle and ran through the median. The whole room could probably see them, in full view of everyone, but he didn’t care. He could only see the door that Mum and Dad had disappeared through, his legs pumping and pumping as his breath caught in his chest. It was like he was running through molasses, like he was running too fast for his body and his lungs. He was going to run faster than his body, and he couldn’t stop.

The only thing he did see was in the front row. A pale face, a prim suit, a thin smile. Elias Bouchard sat in the front row, casually watching the proceedings, and he caught sight of Jon as he tore through the crowd. 

And, for the first time, Mr. Bouchard looked shocked. 

But Jon didn’t stop. Mr. Bouchard was nothing, not in comparison to this. He burst through the door, barely cognizant of two sets of feet running just as quickly after him, and barrelled straight into a skinny figure. 

Jon fell on his ass, grunting involuntarily. Another figure, much taller with a much deeper voice, also grunted. A low and rough voice barked a laugh, sharp and rough, more like an animal than a woman’s. 

“For a theater kid, you must be the clumsiest man I’ve ever met.”

“You wouldn’t be so surprised if you knew more theater kids,” the other figure said, and Jon’s swimming vision focused enough to see Dad sprawled on the floor in front of him. He looked fairly apologetic. “Ah, yes. Hullo, Jon. I’ve been expecting you. I’m afraid this confrontation was somewhat inevitable.”

He was less than a meter in front of Jon. Jon’s Dad, sprawled like an enormous bug on the floor, all elbows and knees. His hair was so much longer than Dad’s used to be, obviously styled and well-taken care of, and he had frown lines instead of laugh lines. But, somehow, what caught Jon’s attention were his eyes. 

They were a cloudy, dull grey. They were more like amorphous clouds, distant and faint, leaving Dad’s face in a kind of distant impassivity. Something about them seemed cold and strange, even though they were set in a kind face. Something about Dad’s eyes Knew every inch of Jon, and knew every fault he had. And Jon was a bug under his heel. 

Jon realized too late that his mouth had been moving, trying to force out words that just wouldn’t come. Dad scrambled upwards, accepting a hand from Mum and letting her help him up. Then he extended a hand down to Jon, smiling weakly. Almost apologetically. As if he knew. 

Jon took his hand, so large where Jon’s felt small in comparison, and let him pull Jon up. He tried to clutch onto the hand, to keep it closer, but Dad apologetically slipped his hand out of Jon’s grasp. 

It was only then that Jon saw his own name tag. ‘ARCHIVIST - BEHOLDING - 2018’. 

“Oh,” Jon said. 

The Archivist grimaced. “Yes. I really am sorry. If it helps, I know how it feels. Literally. Feels...quite bad, if I remember correctly.”

“Worse,” Jon said dully.

“Wait,” Mu - Daisy said, glancing between the Archivist and Jon quickly. “Is the kid actually -”

“EvilCon exists in all points throughout time and space,” the Archivist sighed. “And I was quite an annoying -” at Jon’s flinch, he quickly amended, “ - rambunctious child. With quite a talent for sneaking into places I wasn’t allowed inside. I suppose that’s a talent that I’ve only honed over the years.”

“The ticket doll let me in,” Jon said lamely. Wait. His eyes widened, something occurring to him. “It called me the Archivist. It called me _you_!”

“Yes, I did pay her to - I mean, the Archivist is more a state of mind.” the Archivist shrugged helplessly. “When you think about the nature of identity in an esoteric way, spiritually one could say that we are _all_ Archivists -” at Jon’s quickly glazing eyes, the Archivist quickly said, “But, mostly, I suppose one could call me the Archivist. And for the purposes of tonight, so are you.”

That was when the door behind Jon burst open, and Agnes and Gerry finally burst inside. They were panting a little, and judging from an outraged mannequin behind them they weren’t strictly supposed to be backstage, but they had come anyway. When she saw the Archivist Agnes’ eyes widened in shock, looking from the Archivist’s grey eyes to Jon’s brown, but Gerry just looked grim. 

“What I was _trying_ to say,” Gerry wheezed, doubling over with his hands on his knees, “was that Gertrude was Head Archivist throughout your dad’s whole life. So it _can’t_ be your Da - oh. Uh, hello. Sir.”

“Gerry. Agnes.” The Archivist glanced between the two of them warmly, as behind him Daisy seemed to have a minor crisis. “It’s good to see you two again. My, you all seem so young.” He glanced back at Daisy. “Can you believe we were all that young?”

“I can’t believe you were all this adorable,” Daisy said. She had whipped out a small screen, and small clicking sounds were coming from it. “I’m losing my mind. This is the cutest thing _ever_. Like baby pictures of a house lemur. The others are going to pay a fortune for this blackmail.” 

“I can’t believe this is happening to me,” Jon muttered, too shocked to even be upset that he just felt psychologically re-orphaned. “I really do grow up to be the spider king.”

“Let’s put a pin in that one for right now,” the Archivist said reassuringly.

“I think you’d make a pretty lame spider king, Jon,” Daisy said. 

“I’ll take that into consideration, honey,” Jon said, eye twitching. “Look, it’s wonderful to see all of you again. I’m sorry for crushing your dreams, Jonathan. In my defense, you should get used to ruining your own life. But I should really minimize any time paradoxes and go murder Elias -”

“Are you two dating?” Agnes asked excitedly. “Are you married? Do you have kids? Can I see a picture of your kids?”

Daisy stared at Agnes blankly as the Archivist muttered something about ‘not freaking Jaisy again’. “I’m a lesbian,” she said flatly. At Agnes’ skeptical look, she elaborated, “that’s when you exclusively want to date and marry girls. Actually, you’re -”

That’s when the Archivist jabbed her in the side with his elbow, and then she jabbed him back, and they scuffled briefly before Daisy won the fight and the Archivist surrendered. Jon was struck by something stranger than time travel, then lost parents and malevolent futures: that the Archivist and Daisy were friends. They spoke with an easy familiarity, as if they had known each other for a while, and it was impossible to miss the way they subtly orbited around each other. Jon didn’t know what was stranger: that he was an evil librarian, or that he had friends. 

Jon was forced to grudgingly admit that it actually made complete sense that he grew up to be an evil librarian. The having friends thing was, somehow, more confusing.

The man in front of him was weird and alien. Somehow too strange to even understand, he used big words and explained complicated concepts in complicated ways. Jon could not imagine ever becoming him. This future, this tall man with the long hair Gran would have hated and the silk jacket like a woman would wear - this man, who stood with easy confidence and whose eyes looked at you as if you were a thing - could never be Jon. 

“I don’t believe you,” Jon whispered, stopping the debate short. 

Neither the Archivist or Daisy looked surprised, although Gerry and Agnes did. “There’s that Sims compulsive lying again,” Daisy said, crossing her arms. “I didn't know you were always this bad.”

“There is nothing _compulsive_ about it.” But the Archivist smiled at Jon - as if he knew, and he accepted it. “I’m sorry, Jonathan. I know that these weren’t the answers you were looking for. You never - you always had a particular talent for always asking the wrong questions.”

“Think of it this way,” Gerry said supportively, clapping Jon on the back, “at least this way you still get to be evil!”

But that wasn’t it. It wasn’t being evil that upset Jon - even if, as he was beginning to suspect, nobody who was here _wanted_ to be here. It wasn’t the fact that the Archivist was not his father, and Daisy Tonner was not his Mum, and they never would be. It wasn’t even the fact that none of his questions had been answered, not really - who Elias Bouchard was and what he wanted with Jon, how Jon had become an evil librarian, why the Archivist had spoken so stirringly of abandoning supervillainy. 

Jon didn’t care about why he became a supervillain. Sometimes that just happened to people. It was fine. But…

Jon didn’t recognize him, that tall and awkward and confident and powerful man. Like a distorted funhouse mirror, something within him was alien and strange. There was no link between him and Jon, no similarities in their smile or their speech or their feelings. There was something within the Archivist that was not within Jon, and it wasn’t twenty years with no haircuts. There was something _evil_ in the Archivist, something that _hated Jon_ , and no matter how gently the Archivist smiled it didn’t change the fact that _the Archivist hated him_. 

He was a stranger. He was an alien. The Archivist was Jon’s enemy, his own personal nemesis, and he always had been. 

Jon stepped backwards, legs shaking, and before he could think too hard about it he barrelled down the hallway, away from the loose association of people he didn’t know at all, and the one person who he could never understand.

  
  
  
  


Jon stopped running when he got to the food court. 

Something about finding out that the supernatural was unionized, that almost getting eaten by a book was a regular thing that happened to tons of people, that the book incident meant that he would probably grow up to be the spider king, thinking he met his parents, realizing that his Dad was just _himself_ from the future, and being told that he would grow up to be an evil librarian instead, made you hungry. 

The food court was, strangely enough, hideously generic. There were several restaurants set into the wall - P.F. Chang’s, McDonald’s - and a small concession stall that sold water and chewy sandwiches. Most notably, there seemed to be another concession stall sagging with alcohol. That one had the longest line. Jon knew that adults liked drinking, but it seemed that evil adults liked it even more. 

There were a few small circular tables scattered around with folding chairs shoved in front. Jon craned his head in search for an open one, but they all seemed to be full of gossiping adults or groups of people exchanging money. Only one table was mostly abandoned, with only one other person slouched in an uncomfortable chair nursing a drink. 

Nothing for it. Jon had to blend into the crowd and fast, just in case the evil librarian guy came looking for him. 

Ugh! And he _still_ didn’t have any proof that Mr. Bouchard was evil! This sucked. 

Jon darted forward, avoiding the clumps of people clinging together like barnacles so he could scramble onto the metal chair across from the morose looking man. He fixedly stared away from the man in a ‘I’m not here to talk to you’ motion, instead peeling away the stupid nametag from his shirt and crumpling it in a ball. In a fit of pique, he tossed the trash away from himself, accidentally solidly bonking a tall Black guy in what looked like a priest’s costume right on his bald head. 

The morose man sitting across from Jon snickered. 

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” Jon muttered, slumping in his seat. He wished he had his GameBoy, or a book. Not that EvilCon was boring, but...well, when you had ditched your friends and your evil future self to go into hiding, it was a little boring. 

“You shouldn’t litter,” the man said wryly, as if he was being a little sarcastic. “Don’t you know it kills the planet?”

“Planet’s going to die in five billion years anyway,” Jon muttered. The man’s little smile widened into a grin. “Shove off.”

“My, you’re a pessimistic one.” The man looked at Jon, a little sadly. Jon realized that the man had very, very dark eyes: not fully black, like a bug’s, but as if they were little pits. They seemed a little sad, just like the man. “Hate to see kids get wrapped up in this.”

“I’m almost a teenager,” Jon snapped. “And it’s hardly _my_ fault. It’s stupid Mr. Bouchard’s fault and stupid Agnes and Gerry’s fault and it’s the _stupid_ fault of _the stupid Archivist_ who’s pretending to be me from the future _._ ”

Maybe he said the word Archivist a bit too loudly, because a strange hush fell over the food court. Some people jumped; others looked around anxiously and huddled over their tables. Jon looked around, mystified at the reaction, while the man just smiled again. His smile changed his face a lot: when he was frowning he was like a carved stone, but when he was smiling he looked like just another young guy. 

“You oughtn’t say that word so loudly,” the man stage-whispered. “It tends to draw attention in crowds. Here, listen.” The man straightened, pitching his voice much louder. “Look, the Archivist’s coming this way. D’ya think they’ve found out about the gambling?”

It was instantaneous. Within seconds every relaxing or gambling monster had shoved their winnings in their pockets or downed their drinks, and evacuated the premises as fast as they could without running. Some gave up all pretense and just flat-out sprinted away. Jon watched in awe as the food court emptied within seconds, leaving only scattered napkins and forgotten bills. 

Wasting absolutely no time, Jon hopped off his chair and scooped the bills into his pockets. Some were the wrong currency, and some were from the future, but probably nobody would check too hard. Hell yeah! This could totally buy Ocarina of Time!

When Jon slid back into the chair with his riches, the man was outright laughing. Jon scowled at him, stuffing the money into his pockets. “Are you making fun of me?”

“No, no. You’re just...very different, Jon.” The man gave him another lopsided smile. “I suppose you wouldn’t recognize me. I’m Oliver Banks. These days, anyway. I’m the Grim Reaper.” He paused a beat. “These days, anyway.”

Jon squinted at the man. He was short and squat, but dressed finely in a purple pea coat buttoned to his chin. His face was broad and strong, but there was something fragile and worn thin in his thick eyebags. His hair was shaved, and everything about him was a little distant.

Finally, as if he was a judge delivering a sentence, Jon said, “You can’t be the Grim Reaper. _The Last Action Hero_ said that the Grim Reaper’s White, not Black.”

“Don’t believe everything you see on television.” Something seemed to occur to Oliver, and he anxiously asked, “You’re from the 90s, right? Do you need role models? Should I be a role model, here? You can be whatever you want to be, Jon. Don’t let society dictate your dreams.”

“I don’t need role models!” Jon squeaked, although he kind of did. People kept on telling him that the reason why he wasn’t masculine was because he needed more adult male figures in his life. Jon was beginning to get worried that he would live the rest of his life with people thinking he was gay. “I’m masculine! I’m _super_ masculine!”

Oliver sighed, leaning back in his chair. “Never mind. Dekker would be better at this anyway, even if he is a cishet. He might not help if he learned that you hit him on the head with a spitball, though.” Jon flushed, not even bothering to try to figure out what a ‘cishet’ was. Future slang, probably. Oliver looked thoughtful for a second. “You know, considering the fact that she never gets an invitation to these things, everybody’s always afraid of Gertrude Robinson showing up anyway. I think we’re all very aware that us all gathering in one place like this is like the Parliament meeting on Guy Fawkes day to her. I guess we’re lucky Dekker believes in a truce…” A Jon’s blank expression, Oliver quickly said, “That’s not your problem. What are you doing here, Jon?”

In short order, Jon explained. He had thought it would be easy and straightforward, but somehow along the way it became difficult to explain. He found himself spending too much time whining about the Archivist, whoever he really was. Oliver was a good listener, attentive and patient, nodding at the right moments and frowning when appropriate. 

“ - I just don’t get it,” Jon bemoaned. At some point he had dropped his head on the table, cheek resting against the cool metal. Oliver had grabbed him an abandoned Irn Bru, and Jon drank it desolately. “I thought that when you got older, it was like - like the important parts of you are the same, and a lot of other stuff gets added on. Like knowing how to drive and do taxes. But I _hate_ him. He’s all cool and witty and evil. It’s not just the evil superpowers, that’s _fine_ , but there’s something in him that’s - that’s not human. It’s evil. And now I’m worried. If that evilness is in him, is it in me too?” His throat ran abruptly dry. “Is that why nobody likes me? Why Gran doesn’t like me? Can they see it?”

Oliver was quiet for a while, carefully picking at his own bottle. When Jon looked carefully he just saw that it was fancy root beer. “I wonder what my younger self would think of me now,” Oliver said thoughtfully. “He definitely wouldn’t recognize me either. I don’t think I knew I was a bloke back then.”

“How do you not know -”

“Gay, Black trans men can do anything, and it’s very important you know that,” Oliver said anxiously. When Jon opened his mouth to ask what a trans was, Oliver quickly changed the subject. “Jon, how would you define living?”

“...if your heart beats?”

“There’s plenty of people in hospitals who are brain dead. What else?”

Jon thought harder. “If your brain’s still thinking and your heart’s still beating, then.”

“You don’t think there’s a difference between being alive and living?”

Jon was twelve, and struggled with existential concepts. “No?”

“There are two things that make someone like me and the Archivist, Jon.” Oliver held up a finger, and Jon found his eyes crossing to focus on it. “A choice, to accept what you have become.” He held up a second finger. “And to die.”

Jon squinted at Oliver. “But you aren’t dead.” He thought harder about this. “I guess you have to be dead to be a Grim Reaper...but what about Agnes, and everyone else?”

“There is more than one kind of death,” Oliver said. “There’s a physical death, and what I would call a profound desolation. A loss of hope. It’s different for everyone, I think - Jude set herself on fire, I got hit by a satellite - ” _What_? “ - but for others it can be more metaphysical. I think Jane Prentiss abandoned her sense of self, and Annabelle went inside her fear into the other side. You could call Avatars the walking dead, I think. In that sense, then yes.” Oliver paused a second, as if in thought. “I am a truly inhuman thing, because I do not fear death. That’s how I would define living: as fearing death. That’s how I would define humanity. But I do not fear death, and thus I am not human.” 

“Wow,” Jon said, out of lack of anything better to say, “I really can be anything I want.”

Oliver smiled crookedly, half wry and sad, half fond. “But I would define living as another way, too. I would define it as change. Every day, and every second, we are changing. For better or for worse. Living is nothing more than the death of who you were a year ago, a day ago, a second ago. Every time we take a new breath it is the psychological death of who came before us. The body renews itself every seven to ten years. We live every day dying, in our own small ways. Yes, the Archivist is the death of Jonathan Sims. But he’s your life, too. I would call him proof that you chose to live despite everything, even when it was difficult and painful. I respect him a great deal, you know. He’s a good man.” 

“I don’t understand anything you’re saying at all,” Jon said dejectedly. 

But Oliver just laughed. “You know, some children are ripe for the End. They just burn with it, that fear of nothing. But some children are very much the opposite. They cannot conceive of the concept, so it does not exist to them. I feel as if you are one of the latter. That explains quite a bit about you as an adult, actually.” He lifted his root beer, as if in a toast. “I’m always a little sleep deprived, so forgive me if I rarely make any sense. I will say this, though, Jon. Only one thing is inevitable. Everything else is up for grabs. Take it from the Grim Reaper.”

“Thanks for the advice,” Jon said honestly, even if it was nonsensical. He slid off the chair, very desperate to get away from this confusing conversation and the surprisingly nice man. He figured that it made sense, though: the Grim Reaper didn’t _have_ to be mean to anybody, so he wasn’t. What was the point? “Can you point me to Elias Bouchard? I have to go yell at him.”

Oliver’s face darkened. “Squirrelly little cheater. He’s probably mingling with the other posh swots at the reception after the presentations. Do you know what year he’s from? If he’s still married to Peter don’t interact with him.”

Married to - “Peter Lukas!” Jon squawked. “But he’s a _jerk_!” Something terrible occurred to him. “Oh my god, are all Evil people gay?”

Oliver stared at him for a very long moment, apparently thinking hard. Finally, he said, “Yes, I think so.”

“Oh my _god_ ,” Jon said, horrified beyond belief. “My Gran’s church is _right_?”

It took another ten minutes before Oliver was able to convince Jon that just because all Evil people were gay it didn’t make all gay people Evil, actually a great deal of non-Evil people were gay, like (who’s a gay person from the 90s) Freddie Mercury? Are you too young for Freddie Mercury? He’s bisexual! Plenty of people are bisexual. 

“Gran says that Freddie Mercury’s of the Devil,” Jon said skeptically. 

“I am the worst role model ever,” Oliver groaned. 

Still, Jon thought, as he waved goodbye to a very shellshocked Oliver and beat feet back to the conference room, at least he felt like he knew more now. Not that he understood, because Jon was beginning to think that no matter how much he knew about all of this he would never understand, but at least he felt like he was working with more information. 

And it made him feel a little better - to know, at least, that someone thought that he grew up into a good person. Jon didn’t feel like a good person now. He probably wasn’t, because he snuck off and got into trouble and nobody liked him. But to think that someday he would be good, that he would have friends...

It almost made up for the fact that he was an Evil zombie guy who everybody was scared of. Almost. 

Sure enough, once Jon stumbled into the now abandoned conference room he saw Gerry and Agnes sitting at one of the empty rows. They seemed to be whispering to each other quietly, but when Jon banged the door open both their heads jerked up. 

Jon ran up to them, chest heaving with exertion. Why was he _running_ everywhere today? Jon hated running! 

But that didn’t seem so important right now. Instead, all that seemed important were Agnes and Gerry, who both looked very serious. Jon wondered if they had spoken with his future self, and what he had said to them. He hoped it was nice. He hoped that the Archivist was a nice person. Jon had always wanted to be a nice person, he had just never found out how. 

Was now a good time to learn? Was it already too late? 

It had always felt that way. That who Jon was now, at twelve, was who he would be for the rest of his life. Always mean, always bitter, always abandoned. He had thought that he was stuck, that he would never be able to change. 

But hadn’t Oliver said that people can’t stop changing? So long as someone’s alive, they can change and grow and be different. Was Jon exempt? Or was he just like every other human being out there, no matter if he grew up to be a scary supervillain - always changing and growing?

“Thank you,” Jon burst out, panting. He swallowed, fighting to get his breathing under control. “Thank you! For waiting.” He faltered, unsure. “And for...everything.”

Gerry and Agnes stared at him. Jon’s heart stuttered in his chest, vibrating with fear.

Then Gerry jumped off his chair, screaming. “Did you know that you’re the new _Gertrude Robinson_! The literal, actual, successor to Gertrude Robinson!”

“Uh,” Jon said, who still did not understand why everybody was so afraid of Gertrude Robinson. 

“Apparently she’s the Evil boogeyman,” Agnes said helpfully, twisting around in her seat to see him. “She seems cool. Daisy said we fall in love. Did you know that all Evil people are gay?”

“Yes! Did you know that swot Peter Lukas married Mr. Bouchard?” Jon asked excitedly. “Did Gertrude Robinson really pull a Guy Fawkes?”

“She told me if I touched her files she’d cut my ear off!”

“Awesome!”

“Daisy says you don’t have to be Evil,” Agnes said, and something in her eyes seemed to burn brighter than usual. “She said you can do _whatever_ you _want_.”

“The Grim Reaper told me that too. I totally met the Grim Reaper, by the way,” Jon bragged. “He said that gay, Black trans men can be whoever they want to be.”

Gerry squinted. “Are you a gay Black trans man?”

Jon faltered. “I’m at least two of those things?”

“What’s a trans?” Agnes asked. 

“I don’t know!”

“Daisy said that girls can be whoever they want too,” Agnes jumped in. “I’m _totally_ going to be just like her when I grow up. I’m gonna set fire to the patriarchy and kiss girls.”

“Oh my _god_ ,” Jon said, with a delighted horror. 

Then they all started talking at once, tripping over each other and talking over each other and going bigger, bigger, bigger. They were going to grow up and be amazing, they were going to drive fast cars and set fire to things and talk on the phone every day and not be Evil if they didn’t want to be, but they would still have superpowers because superpowers were cool, and Gerry was going to show Agnes what a GameBoy was and Agnes was going to show Jon what a hair curler was, and all of it was possible, every second. 

In that minute, Jon felt as invulnerable as he had ever felt, and the sheer adrenaline of self-confidence prompted him to make what would likely be a colossal mistake. Probably the worst mistake of his life. But by god would it be funny. 

“I have a great idea for a prank,” Jon said. 

Agnes looked thoughtful as Gerry’s face lit up. “How much fire is involved?”

“It’s mostly fire.”

“I’m _so_ in.”

  
  
  


They had to work quickly. 

Agnes ran to the kiddie corner to grab the play-doh, yarn, and construction paper. Gerry left for the vendor’s area and food court so he could make sure that all of their intended quarries were within the danger zone. Jon, for his part, took a deep breath and slipped into the reception area. 

It was the last unexplored public area of EvilCon. It was much smaller than all the other rooms, and a lot fancier. There was a big buffet table that made Jon’s stomach rumble, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten anything all day. There was a small stage at one end, where a truly awful band seemed to be screeching out some music. Besides a smattering of tables, the rest of the room was bare of furniture, and absolutely crowded with adults. 

They seemed to stick together in cliques, but there were definitely figures drifting between groups. The largest circle of people Jon saw seemed to be revolving around a familiar looking woman with white strands tangled in her hair. She was wearing a very pretty black and white mod dress and holding a champagne flute, laughing prettily at some joke. But she wasn’t who Jon was looking for, so Jon settled on grabbing one of the chairs and climbing on top of it so he could see over the crowd. He couldn’t _wait_ for that growth spurt. 

Already, some faces were becoming familiar. Those Fairchild people were standing in the center, talking with other people dressed weirdly similarly. Peter Lukas was hugging a corner, clearly miserable, as - yes, there he is! 

Mr. Bouchard stood next to his...either husband or ex-husband, holding a champagne flute and chatting easily. Jon wondered idly what time period Mr. Bouchard was _really_ from - they had all thought Victorian at least, but if he was at EvilCon then he could be from anywhere. 

Jon itched with the desire to run up and interrogate him. If he could just get proof that the man was an evil time traveller, then…

Then what? He would know for sure if the spectacular was real? He knew that now. Adults would finally believe him and take him seriously? Today was the first time that Jon met adults who took him seriously, Oliver Banks and Daisy Tonner and everyone. Find out why he was so interested in Jon? He grew up to be a super cool supervillain, duh. He would finally get friends? He had friends now. Probably. 

It was almost a little anticlimactic: that Jon finally had within his reach everything he had come here to do, only to abandon those plans for a higher pursuit. The higher pursuit of using his future status as a supervillain for good.

Was Jon the kind of supervillain that got redeemed? Like Vegeta? Vegeta was cool. Jon didn’t mind growing up to be Vegeta. Even if he always lost against Goku. But Goku would totally lose again Superman, no matter _what_ Tommy said, so whatever -

There he was. Jon found the Archivist hovering near the punch bowl, anxiously gripping a flute of champagne as Daisy boredly stared at her little screen. They were whispering slightly to each other, but Jon had been remiss in his study of lipreading and couldn't make out what they were saying. He knew Morse Code! Morse Code was useful! More people should use Morse Code. 

Jon jumped off his chair, ignoring the wormy lady he had almost bowled over, and ran towards the corner. He was halfway across the room, dodging an extremely foul smelling man in a stovepipe hat, but by the time he caught sight of the Archivist again he was already talking with somebody else.

He was a thin man, even gaunter than the Archivist. He had a long, thin face, with hair cut short to his scalp and a prominent widow’s peak. He was wearing a tan jumpsuit and had ruddy red hair, but none of that seemed very important when the man was absolutely _covered_ in ants. 

He was teeming with them. One arm was black with them, pulsating and thrumming and crawling. It freaked Jon out hard, more than anything else he had seen today. The man seemed desperate and upset - understandable, considering the ant situation - and he was speaking passionately to the Archivist, who also seemed somewhat uncomfortable. Daisy had a hand on her hip, over a small bulging thing underneath her shirt. 

Stupidly and impulsively, Jon found himself running up anyway, untied shoelaces flopping on the floor. The conversation looked important, and Jon was _never_ being left out of important conversations again. Those reruns were right: knowledge _was_ power, and Jon was sure that the more he knew, the safer he’d be. 

“ - don’t _understand_ . There’s not going to be an EvilCon in a year. There’s not going to be a _world_ in a year. Everything you’re doing now, everything that you’re trying, is going to be meaningless.”

“Uh,” the Archivist said, sounding strongly as if he was trapped in a group project with the weird kid who ate boogers in the back of the classroom. “Really, isn’t life meaningless?”

“Everybody in this room is going to do _worse_ than die -”

“Jon,” Daisy said sharply, and both Jon and the Archivist startled. She stepped forward, gently taking Jon’s arm and moving him slightly away from the ant man (Ant-Man?) and closer to her. She was warm, and very soft. 

“Is it that time already?” the Archivist asked, surprised. He quickly brushed some ants off his arm, looking a little skittish. “Mr. - er, Kennedy, please. I understand 2019 is upsetting, but you aren’t allowed to tell us anything about it. To be honest, I haven’t the foggiest what you’re talking about. The Beholding and I aren’t quite - please, little pitchers have big ears. It’s best to end this conversation here.”

“You don’t understand,” Mr. Kennedy moaned. “You’re worried about upsetting the kid? Aren’t you worried about plunging the kid into a _hell dimension_ where he spends the rest of his infernal life tormented by -”

“Jordan! Darling, there you are.” The glamorous lady popped up at Jordan’s elbow, startling everybody. Jon hadn’t even seen her approach. She smiled winningly at the Archivist and Daisy, neither of whom looked very amused. Mr. Kennedy seemed too covered in ants to appreciate the friendliness. “Jordan, you know we aren’t allowed to talk about 2019.” She waved a hand demonstratively, fingers moving in strange and inhuman ways. “Disrupting the timeline and the timestream is _serious business_ that no sane person would ever do. _And_ you’ll get banned from the next EvilCon!”

“You don’t get it!” Mr. Kennedy screamed, making Daisy push Jon further behind her. He had to peer out from behind her to see what was going on. The ants were spinning and spinning on his body, crawling up on his neck and into his mouth. Some were going into...into...Daisy covered his eyes. “There will _be_ no EvilCons, not after -”

There were a series of thumps, and a small suction sound, and when Jon finally managed to pry Daisy’s fingers off his eyes there was no Jordan Kennedy: just a few ants, crawling around with nowhere to go. 

Jon looked up at the Archivist, strangely scared. “Where did -”

“He forgot he left the iron on,” the woman said very quickly. She smiled winningly at Jon, bending down a little bit. “Who’re you, cutie?”

Jon puffed out his cheeks, insulted. “I’m almost a teenager,” he informed the woman, who only seemed to smile wider. “And I’m Jonathan Sims. Don’t condescend.”

“I’d never dream of it,” the woman swore. She straightened, glancing between Jon and the Archivist in an obvious question.

The Archivist just sighed. “Yes, we’re on schedule. Mostly.” He frowned, a bit troubled. His forehead crease was familiar - it was Jon’s forehead crease, whenever he was thinking hard as he scanned his reflection in the mirror. The familiar motion was too strange on his adult face to be comforting. “I wonder if that early childhood brush with the horrors of hive insects influenced my lifelong antipathy towards Jane Prentiss -”

“You’re just mad she beats you at poker,” Daisy said curtly.

“I agree!” The woman said, much more cheerfully. She winked at Jon. “Glad to see you got my invitation, honey. Remember: you can be _anything_ you want to be. Even a spider king!”

“Please don’t call it spider king,” the Archivist said, supremely exhausted. 

“Why does everybody want to be my role model!” Jon cried, exasperated. 

“You give off the air of desperately needing one,” Daisy panned. 

“Elias attempting to exploit my daddy issues is the cause of this entire mess,” the Archivist said apologetically. 

“My name’s Annabelle.” the woman said, extending a hand. Jon cautiously reached out a hand to shake it, but Daisy slapped his hand down. But Annabelle didn’t seem offended - she just laughed again. “Hit me up if you want to reconsider your stance on spiders. I was scared of them once too, you know. But have you considered: loving them?”

“No.”

“Just think about it! There’s a lot of upsides, you know.”

“Thanks for the offer, ma’am,” Jon said, as politely as he could, because this twenty-something woman terrified every ounce of his body in a way that nobody else save Ant-Man had today, “I’ll tell you if my answer changes.”

“That’s all I ask! I’ll keep an Eye on you, kiddo,” Annabelle giggled. She pointed one lithe finger at her dark eyes, and Jon blanched as six more sprouted on her face, glimmering beetle-black. “Archivist, meet up with me later, we ought to talk. Jon, if you spend the rest of your life thinking of me as your queer coded Disney villain I can die happy.”

“You will definitely wish to speak with me later,” the Archivist said diplomatically, and Annabelle easily swanned off. Jon watched her go: mildly frightened, definitely impressed. She was so _confident_. Jon wanted to be that confident. 

If Allison knew Annabelle, Jon decided, then she would _definitely_ want to be her instead of dumb old Denise Lewis. Maybe Agnes and Gerry were right, and EvilCon was a ripe field of finding positive mentor figures? Or at least queer coded Disney villains, whatever that meant?

“I’m not a supervillain,” the Archivist told Jon, pained. 

“You’re totally a supervillain,” Jon said, crossing his arms. “Like Vegeta.”

“I am not Vegeta. Dragonball Z is not actually that good.”

“I knew you weren’t me!” Jon yelled. “Dragonball Z is really good and you only hate it because you’re evil!”

“I rewatched it when I was nineteen and it didn’t hold up!” the Archivist cried, exasperated. “And I’m not a supervillain! I’m more like a - conduit for a malevolent force that puppeteers me to its sinister whims?”

“Sounds like Vegeta to me,” Daisy said. 

“I didn’t come here to talk about this!” Jon yelled. He scowled at the Archivist, who still seemed a little hung up on the Dragonball thing. “I need your cooperation with a prank.”

He didn’t have to explain. The Archivist was him, so he already knew. Everything hinged on if the Archivist would play along: if he went all adult and stiff and grouchy on him, insisting that he play by the rules and follow a sense of propriety, or if he remembered what it was like to be twelve. If he remembered what it was like to be Jon, today, here, staring his future self in the face and desperately searching for someone he wanted to be. 

“I’m on it,” the Archivist said gravely, and Jon couldn’t help but grin. 

And, so strangely, the Archivist smiled back. At that moment, he really did look like Dad. And Jon knew that the Archivist knew, and that it made him smile even wider. 

“Uh,” Daisy said, “on _what_?”

The Archivist winked at her. “A little bit of trouble. Come on, Daisy, I think it’s time to ruin Elias’ day.”

“Fu - fudge, I’m always down for that.” Daisy saluted Jon roughly, before thinking better of it and bending down a little to give him a tight hug. Jon flushed. She was _really_ soft. “See you later, kiddo.”

He couldn’t even complain about the kiddo. The Archivist saluted too, and he took Daisy’s hand to swim through the crowd with her to where Mr. Bouchard and Peter Lukas seemed to be having a mild argument. 

Jon left his future self to his important job, and instead darted for the entrance. Gerry was there waiting for him, clutching a knapsack he had stolen from somewhere. He reached into it and pulled out a canister of what looked like liquid cement. 

“Everyone’s inside,” Gerry said cheerfully. “Mum’s bothering Manuela Dominguez over by the stage, so hopefully she shouldn’t notice me, but if she does please hide me. All of Agnes’ cultists are in here too. See Agnes yet?”

The door creaked open, and Agnes poked her head in. “We all set?”

“Yep!” Jon nodded fastidiously. “The Archivist agreed to help. He’s warming up the target. Let’s give him a minute to really work him over.”

Both Agnes and Gerry nodded. Distantly, the sounds of the Archivist poking his way through the crowd could be heard. If Jon craned his head, he could see the Archivist speaking to one of the mannequins. At least, Jon thought she was one of the mannequins. 

“Brave of you to show up here, Archivist,” the mannequin trilled, “after what you did to _my_ deliverymen. A cruel thing to do to Breekon & Hope.”

“My poker friends?” the Archivist asked, confused. “What did - I mean, of course! And watch what you say, or I’ll do it again!”

He escaped quickly. Jon wasn’t sure he could trust his future self to carry out any deceit.

Unfortunately, waiting for Jon’s future self to drop hints at an impending disaster to his ex-History teacher involved...waiting. Jon had never been good with waiting. He had always been a man of action, or at least a man of impulsivity. But he was stuck here now standing with Agnes and Gerry, two people who had been with him throughout the weirdest and most tumultuous day of his life who he barely knew. It was a little awkward. 

“So,” Agnes said, clasping her hands together as Gerry shook his can of liquid cement and began carefully applying it to the cracks between the doors, “will I see you guys again next year?”

“I’m pretty sure we’re going to get banned from EvilCon forever after this stunt,” Gerry said sagely, carefully squeezing the liquid cement bottle. “But yeah, sure.”

“I’m glad my Gran can’t kill me about this,” Jon said optimistically. But he faltered, recognizing the way Agnes was wringing her hands. “But even if we don’t meet up again next EvilCon, that’s okay, right? We can just meet up again in the real world.”

Agnes stared at him, biting her lip. “But I’ll be, like, fifty. I won’t be fun to hang out with at _all_.”

“Can you steal me away from my Ma and adopt me, then?” Gerry asked promptly, counting under his breath as he waited for the cement to dry. When some partygoers looked too interested in what Gerry was doing, Jon and Agnes quickly moved to cover him. 

“That’s a great idea,” Jon said excitedly. “Can you steal me away from my Gran so we can live in a big house in London?”

“London’s expensive,” Gerry pointed out. “Let’s do Wales. I like Wales.”

“I’m half-Welsh,” Jon said - not because he was, but because Daisy was Welsh and he secretly still wanted to be related to Daisy. “Let’s do Wales.”

Agnes considered this. “I’ll have bumped off all my cult members by then. And the Archivist said I don’t _have_ to kill the world…” She brightened, smiling at Jon. “Yeah! I’ll hold off on destroying the world until I’m at _least_ seventy, so then we can live in a big house in Wales!”

“Can we have a dog?” Gerry asked, blowing on the cement. “I want five dogs.”

“Ten dogs,” Jon said.

“Fifteen dogs!” Agnes said. “And a cat.”

“Five cats and fifteen dogs,” Jon agreed. “At _least_.”

Everybody nodded. This was the only reasonable course of action.

But then Agnes faltered a little, bunching her hands in her skirt and releasing them. “So we’ll really still be friends, then?” Agnes asked. “After all of this? Even if I’m fifty?”

“If you guys still want to be friends with a scary future Gertrude Robinson,” Jon said lamely, who still did not understand why Gertrude Robinson was so scary. 

“Duh!” Gerry said heatedly. “I don’t know why _you_ guys would want to be friends with -”

“Gerry! We can’t all do it!”

“Yeah, Gerry, grow some self-esteem!”

Gerry huffed, and Jon couldn’t help but laugh, and even Agnes giggled. 

“ - you aren’t _listening_ to me, Elias,” a familiar-unfamiliar voice said, and Jon and his friends froze. It was the Archivist, who was following Mr. Bouchard and Peter Lukas as they obviously tried to evade him. “Do I really have to introduce myself again? You’ve only been stalking me throughout the time stream for a decade. Thanks for that, by the way.”

“Don’t feel special, Mr. Sims,” Mr. Bouchard said, and Jon and Agnes hissed at Gerry until he finally finished his task and stashed the liquid cement in his pocket. They all whistled innocently. “I kept an eye on several different candidates. Ms. James was a close pick. Now if you excuse me, I highly doubt Gertrude caught wind of this -”

Jon glanced at Gerry. Gerry glanced at Agnes. Agnes nodded, and they all silently put their hands in the circle, before silently breaking.

Distantly, a pack of taped play dough exploded. 

The explosion rocked the building. It was a muffled, sternum thumping ‘whoof’, and Jon felt his ears pop. It made his teeth grind, his hair standing on end. The room silenced abruptly, the partygoers looking around at each other with barely concealed tension. 

A woman with a nametag proclaiming herself a Lukas held a screen to her ear, eyes widening. “Security found C4 in the vendor’s room!” 

The words, spoken at conversational volume, rippled through the silent room like a stone in a still pond. 

Then Agnes lit her second fake bundle of C4, and another explosion rocked the room. This time, it was recognizably much closer. 

Very loudly, at the top of his voice, the Archivist cried out, “That’s what I’ve been _trying_ to tell you, Elias! Gertrude Robinson’s here!”

And everyone started screaming at once.

Peter Lukas disappeared with a pop. Jon, Gerry, and Agnes jumped out of the way of the exit, ducking underneath the nearby buffet table as a flood of people dove for the doors only to find them stuck fast. Those in front screamed in panic, and the panic rippled back throughout the room as everybody else realized that they were sealed in tight. 

Just for the drama, Agnes set off her last explosion. The room screamed again, and Jon watched in barely hidden delight as the worst of the worst of British supervillains lost themselves in hysterics over play dough and a whisper on the wind of Evil’s boogeyman. 

What scared the monsters under the bed? What Evil was far greater even than the evil? The most powerful, the highest echelons of society - who dragged even them down into the dirt with the rest of the world? 

Adults thought they were so smart, just because they controlled everything. Just because they knew things and drove cars and drank fancy champagne, they thought that they controlled the world. But the world wasn’t controllable, not really. 

To an enterprising mind - to three kids, with nothing to lose - the world was a playground. 

From Jon’s vantage point, the room was a stampede of shoes. Some people were crying, others were yelling, others were arguing. In the thick crush, a single head looked underneath the table, round and older with straw-blonde hair tied into a small ponytail. 

“Got room for two more?” Daisy asked. 

Jon obligingly scooted over, and Daisy easily crawled under the table. It took the Archivist a great deal more effort, him muttering under his breath as he was forced to fold up his limbs into a very uncomfortable looking position, and Jon couldn’t help but giggle. 

“I remember this table being much higher,” the Archivist muttered. But he spared a smile for Jon anyway. “Having fun?”

“You know it,” Jon said back. “Do you really remember all of this?”

“Hm?” Jon glanced out the table, watching a worm lady decompose. “My, it’s Jane Prentiss. Haven’t seen her since - she seems well. Glad to see some people don’t change.” He glanced back at Jon, who was still waiting for him to answer the question. “So much as anybody remembers anything from twenty years ago, I suppose.” Jon graciously accepted that he didn’t remember even five years ago that well. It was somehow comforting to know that Jon didn’t remember Allison, didn’t remember Mike or Ruby or Henry. “But today was memorable, if that’s what you’re asking. I’d call it the beginning of the end for me...or, perhaps, beginning of the beginning.”

The words stuck on his tongue, and the distant sounds of hilarious crying and sobbing faded as Jon stared at the Archivist. He kept on searching for himself in that face, in those eyes, but he still couldn’t see it. He wanted to see his own brown eyes looking back at him, but he couldn’t see them. There was only grey. “Do Agnes and Gerry and I really stay friends?” Jon whispered, somehow terrified, somehow vulnerable. “Do we really…?”

“Live in your big Welsh house with twenty pets?” the Archivist said, with a small smile. He said it almost lyrically, as if it was a sentence he’d said very many times before. “No. No, Jon, there’s no Welsh house. At least not yet.” At Jon’s crushed look, he gently continued, “You get something much better. I’m - I’m excited to see you have it.”

Then Jon got a little emotional, and the Archivist got a little emotional, and they both pretended they weren’t having emotions until their weird reverie was shattered by the sound of breaking glass.

Jon poked his head out from under the table. After a beat, so did the Archivist. They both watched dumbly as legions of supervillains climbed out a shattered window, clearly broken by a projectile rock or something, out of sheer desperation. Women’s dresses tore on the fabric, and old men huffed and puffed.

Everyone scrambled out from under the table, Daisy helping Agnes in her long skirt out, and they all watched with poorly hidden glee as the highest tiers of society became squawking ducks in their panic. But one figure stood out in particular - one man who was furiously yelling into thin air, to an ex-husband who had left him there to figure out his own fate. 

When Elias Bouchard saw the Archivist he angrily strode over, and Jon and the other kids quietly slipped to the side. The Archivist, for his part, just pasted on an affable yet innocent smile, just as unassuming as Jon’s. 

“This is nonsense,” Mr. Bouchard snapped at the Archivist, who nodded fastidiously. “All of this panic for nothing. Those explosions were probably just that idiot Perry on too much coke again.”

Coca cola? But the Archivist just pursed his lips. 

“It’s like I _said_ , Elias,” he said. “I Saw that Gertrude Robinson had gotten her hands on an EvilCon flyer and ticket. Aren’t you still her boss? Were you the one who invited her?”

“Of course not,” Mr. Bouchard snapped. His normally immaculate tie was a little askew, his lips pursed instead of in his usual half-smile. “I’m hardly suicidal. Gertrude has no clue that EvilCon exists. How would she even get her hands on a flyer?”

And that was Jon’s cue. He smiled sheepishly, as if he had accidentally hit a baseball through Elias’ window, and linked his hands behind his back. “Aw, gee, Mr. Bouchard,” Jon drawled, as Agnes and Gerry made identical pseudo-apologetic expressions. “That one might be my fault, I think.”

Mr. Bouchard whipped around, and Jon saw the exact moment that he recognized him: his eyebrows shooting up, his jaw dropping open. “ _You_ ,” Mr. Bouchard hissed. “How did you even get in here? How did -”

“A flyer fell out of your pocket,” Jon chirped, and Mr. Bouchard’s face went white. Well, whiter. “I thought it was super weird and spooky, so I looked online about it. Magnus Institute does weird and spooky, right? And that’s Ms. Robinson’s job, right?” Jon’s eyes glinted, and he couldn’t hide the smirk anymore. “All I did was send her an email.”

“Wait,” Daisy said slowly, glancing between Mr. Bouchard and Jon and the Archivist. “Elias didn’t purposefully drop the flyer to get you to come here? I could have sworn -”

“Why would I do that?” Mr. Bouchard snapped. “I was _scouting_ him for Archivist. The goal here is to keep him in ignorance for as long as possible. Why would I _tell_ him about the supernatural’s best kept secret?”

“An anime convention?” Daisy asked. 

“Why indeed!”

Everybody jumped, because Annabelle had shown up unexpectedly again. She shot Jon a roguish wink, and he couldn’t help but smile back, which seemed to delight her. “It appears that our dear Director must have accidentally dropped some confidential information,” she said mischievously, as if she was sharing some hot gossip with the girls. “So careless as to drop a flyer, Elias? My, you’re losing your edge.”

Mr. Bouchard ground his teeth. “I have one guess about how that flyer fell out of my pocket.”

“Be that as it may!” Annabelle said, bowling over him, “you know the rules as well as I do. Those who tell unmarked persons about EvilCon - unintentionally as it may be - break the rules.” Her eight eyes glimmered in the dim lighting, sending the light into fractals. “And those who notify _Gertrude Robinson_ of our existence - why, I believe that deserves a lifetime ban, doesn’t it? You’ve endangered us all. I’m afraid that the administration can’t forgive that.”

Mr. Bouchard opened and closed his mouth, like a gaping fish. “Then isn’t Jon the one who broke the rules?” Mr. Bouchard demanded. “He’s the one who informed the blasted woman about the convention.”

“Afraid not!” Annabelle said cheerfully. “The rules are a contract agreed upon for those who enter EvilCon. One can’t be expected to abide by the rules of EvilCon before they even buy their tickets.” She pursed her lips at him disapprovingly. “Honestly, Elias, blaming a twelve year old for your own errors. You’re at least twenty times his age. That’s just embarrassing.”

“Fine,” Mr. Bouchard snapped. “Ban me from your silly convention. It’s a ridiculous spectacle, anyway.”

“I really also have to ask you to stop timestream stalking our young Archivist here,” Annabelle said, equally peppy. “It’s rather creepy, don’t you think?”

“As his mother, I want a restraining order,” Daisy said, in a complete monotone. 

Annabelle nodded. “You heard his mother. Try to keep your fingers out of other’s pies from now on, Elias?”

“Of course, Annabelle,” Mr. Bouchard said, buttoning up his suit jacket, somehow impossibly sarcastically. “Flaunt your little power plays all you like. This event will prove defunct in a short time, anyway.” He smiled thinly. “I look forward to revisiting our power agreement then.”

“Goodbye, Elias,” Annabelle said. “It’s best if you leave voluntarily.”

“I’d recheck your projections once you return home, Elias. You may find that things change when you least expect them to. And for what it’s worth?” the Archivist stuck his hands in his pockets and grinned a grin so light and free it made him seem twenty years younger. “You really were a shite History teacher.”

Then Daisy covered Jon’s eyes again, and he heard a series of great and wet sucking grunts, and when she uncovered his eyes Elias was gone. 

They stood in silence for a second, Gerry looking around the room to try and catch sight of where Elias had gone. Jon quietly suspected a gigantic suction tube, but he wasn’t going to assume. 

“Wow,” Jon whispered, staring at the empty space where Elias Bouchard once stood - more specifically, staring at Annabelle, who smiled like it had all gone according to plan. “You’re _really cool_.”

“Oh, good lord,” the Archivist said, as Annabelle visibly preened. “So this is where it started? I forgot about that. I’ve been waiting for that moment for twenty years and I forgot that I used to hero worship you.”

“There’s time enough for that later!” Annabelle said, clapping the Archivist on the arm. “I think it’s time for the little ruffians to scamper off to bed! Gerry, Agnes, I’ve notified your guardians where you both are.” They groaned simultaneously. “No whining, now! I’ll wait here with you both until they show up.” She eyed Daisy and the Archivist wryly, which was no small feat with that amount of eyes. “I’ll catch up with you two later. Mum’s the word and all that.”

“Yes, yes, you’re very impressive.” the Archivist rolled his eyes before glancing at Jon. “Would you like me to walk you out?”

“I don’t know,” Jon said, folding his arms, “do I get eaten by a feral cowon my way out? Or a wolf?”

“Nah, you’re bad on the digestion,” Daisy said.

“There aren’t any feral cows in London, are there? I thought they were only in the American Midwest,” the Archivist said anxiously, rubbing at a thin circular scar stretching around his pointer finger, the same place a wedding band would go. But he smiled at Jon all the same, and Jon couldn’t help but smile back. “You make it out of EvilCon in one piece. It’s alright if you’re scared. Just remember to be brave too.” He paused a beat. “You do not, however, get home before dinner. Gran’s going to kill you, I’m afraid.”

“Aw, man!”

“Get going,” Annabelle said gently, “before you’re late.” She winked, with only one eye. “It was good to meet you, young Archivist. Remember my offer.”

“Spider king isn’t off the table,” Jon assured her. He waved goodbye at the Archivist and Daisy. “Bye, guys. See you in twenty years.”

Daisy gave a small, sad little smile, wiggling her hands. “I’d advise evading me as long as you can. If you can’t escape, then fight to kill.”

“...okay?”

“See you on the flip side, Jonathan,” the Archivist said. 

“Bye, Jon,” Jon said.

Before he could say bye to Agnes and Gerry he found himself almost bowled over by their combined mass. They both squeezed him tight before separating, Gerry’s eyes suspiciously misty. 

“See you soon!” Agnes promised. 

“We’ll see you soon,” Gerry swore.

“Yeah,” Jon said, “see you guys soon. As soon as I’m out of here, okay?”

They all shook on it. That, at least, would have to be enough.

It was a long walk back. The place was abandoned, tables strewn over and debris fluttering in the air. The explosions had really done a number on the place: Jon walked past charred tables, pock-marked walls. There was a distinct scent of ash and smoke in the air, a harsh and metallic aftertaste. It made him sneeze a little. 

All of the magic - the people, the objects, the sights - of EvilCon was gone. All that was left was ruin, and the promise of another try next year.

Jon wasn’t sure that he would be invited next year. But that was okay. He would see it again. That, at least, was nice to know. 

Jon dug his hands in his pockets, nodding his head to a silent tune, oversized shoes with untied laces scuffing against blast marks left in the concrete. He was busy thinking about the kind of tall tales he’d make up about why Mr. Bouchard had mysteriously disappeared when he found himself stumbling into something.

Or someone. Jon grunted in pain, stumbling backwards without falling. He opened his eyes to look at what he had ran into - how had he _missed_ something right in front of him? - only to see that it wasn’t a something, but a someone. 

Jon’s first thought was that it was a hobo. Dirty, raggedy, and kind of smelly, the man standing in front of him was awkwardly tall and overly thin. His hair was shaved close to the scalp - not from any kind of fashion style or choice, but because long hair was difficult to take care of. He was wearing at least three or four coats and jackets and jumpers, and his trousers were overly large and tied by a thick belt. He was as thin as a skeleton, so tall he loomed effortlessly, and something about his face and force was deeply oppressive. 

His eyes were green. Not green pupils - just green, with no whites or irises or pupils. Just green. It was a green that hated you.

No, not hated. It was a green that didn’t care if you lived or died. It knew you were nothing, and it made you nothing. In that second, when the tall man stared down at Jon, Jon was nothing. He had never been anything, and he was nothing now, and he would be nothing for the rest of time. 

“Well,” the man said, with a voice like static and hate, “I don’t remember this.”

Jon couldn’t talk. His knees were knocking together, and his hands were shaking.

“I’m not surprised,” the man said. “Humans cannot perceive the colors that mantis shrimps do. They’re just incapable. The three dimensional mind rejects understanding of the four dimensional. No. It simply cannot be perceived or explained.”

Jon’s throat closed up. His heart tried to jump out of his chest. He was scared, so thoroughly and completely, and he felt like nothing more than fear. 

“So there’s no point in explaining this,” the man said, raising a hand and reaching out to Jon. His fingers were tight, as if he was getting ready to grip and squeeze. “You’ll understand one day. Or not. That’s rather the point of killing you. They’ll be no EvilCons at the end of the world, so I suppose it doesn’t matter if I break the rules or not. It doesn’t matter. Very little does, save this.”

Something green flashed, an eye blinking in and out, and the man abruptly let go. He had never changed expression, never smiled, never seemed anything more than a cold and dispassionate robot. 

“That’s a good idea,” the man said. Without breaking eye contact with Jon - and Jon realized too late that he had never broken eye contact, not once, he hadn’t blinked - he reached into his pocket and pulled out a large knife. It was old and weathered, and spotted with something that wasn’t rust. “Stay still.”

The man grabbed Jon’s hand and held it tightly. Jon flinched back, incapable of controlling the impulse, but his hand didn’t move. Jon was distantly aware of the fact that he was crying. He could hardly feel it.

With his other hand, he quickly and efficiently sliced a deep cut around Jon’s pointer finger, the same place a wedding band would go. Jon screamed in pain, the knife cutting deep, the sensation cutting to the bone. 

Strangely, the man made his first facial expression, and grimaced. “Sorry. I don’t like hurting you. You’re just a kid.”

Jon’s crying was much louder now, almost hysterical, but the man didn’t look at Jon’s finger. Instead, he looked at his own, fascinatedly watching his pointer finger. 

Nothing happened. It was just his pointer finger.

“No scar,” the man muttered. “You’re right. No scar…” For the first time, his face creased in a smile, and for the first time he seemed almost familiar. “No scar!”

Jon wailed, clutching his bleeding finger. 

“You aren’t me.” The man’s eyes widened, glowing brilliantly green. “You used to be me, but now you aren’t. Something happened. Something changed.” The man’s eyes glinted again, skinning reality into an awful static that made Jon’s teeth taste like metal. The man was Seeing everything, but he wasn’t looking at Jon. “It was him. He’s not the Archivist at all. He never was. A snake in the grass - a spider in his - Jon!” The man abruptly seemed to remember he was there. He bent down, face creasing into faux-concern, as Jon cried and cried like a complete baby. “I don’t know what’s happened to you here today. But it’s a beautiful thing, Jon. You’ve proven to me that nothing is written. Nothing is fate. You only have your own life. Make it a good one, Jon. For me. Please. For at least one of us.” He grimaced. “I really am a terrible role model, aren’t I? Oh, well. It doesn’t matter. We’ll never see each other again.” He smiled a little, terrible and sad. “I’ll never be you. And you’ll never be me. Isn’t that such a wonderful thing?”

“I don’t,” Jon gasped, “I don’t understand what -”

“No, you don’t. But you will.” The man squeezed Jon’s shoulders, smiling weakly. “Change the future, create your new reality. You can do it. You already have. Live, Jon. Please.”

If the man said anything else after that - if there was even anything else to say - Jon didn’t know. His vision swam, his world was reduced to terrible pain, and the next thing Jon knew he was standing on the front steps of the hotel, crying his heart out, until somebody stopped and called the police. 

His Gran had, of course, killed him. 

  
  
  


**epilogue**

“But, of course, the case of the mysteriously disappearing ant man could not possibly be true. Perfectly made up. The supernatural is fake and there is no such thing as ghosts. End statement.”

Jon finished up his text to Annabelle as he spoke into the tape deck. _C u on thursday then bring that champagne i like_. 

“Supplemental. All of my coworkers are annoying and I hate my job.” Jon sighed into the tape deck, pulling up Angry Birds on his phone instead. “I still don’t know why a certain _someone_ insisted that I take the job offer. This is a waste of my time. Unfortunately, I owe her a favor, so here I am.” Jon sighed again, as dramatically as he could. “Also unfortunately, I’ve grown somewhat attached to my atrocious co-workers and I’d like to rescue them from this situation. It’s surprisingly difficult to _prove_ to the others that they even need to be saved, but I will persevere. That being said, if somehow Martin falls into a very large pit for the rest of time, I certainly wouldn’t -”

There was a distant sound of a door slamming, and of a woman yelling very loudly. Jon sighed, pausing the tape deck. He was definitely not getting any more work done today. He ejected the cassette, slipping it into his pocket, and ducked his head out of his Head Archivist office and looked into the bullpen. 

What he saw was a beautiful young woman in short khaki shorts and a bright red crop top, with long red hair flowing down to her waist. She was the one who had kicked the door open, and was currently occupying herself loudly yelling at Jon’s terrible coworkers. Sasha poked her head out from the library, glancing at Jon with confusion.

“Who -?”

“My flatmate,” Jon said, long-suffering. 

Slinking in behind Agnes, Gerry waved cheerfully at Jon. Jon scowled - mostly for appearances, partly because he _hated_ it when they broke into the middle of one of his scenes and demanded all the attention. Jon worked hard on his parts.

“Jon! These guys friends of yours?” Tim asked. He seemed delighted by Agnes, who was loudly criticizing Elias’ interior decor decisions. “Man, where’d you _find_ this lady?”

“She’s about fifty years too old for you,” Jon said wryly. He stepped into the bullpen, Sasha right behind him. “Agnes, please quiet down. Why are you here.”

“You forgot your lunch, so we thought we’d come and drop it off!” Agnes said cheerfully. Jon scowled at them and the blatant flaunting of the fact that they were both unemployed - Agnes due to generational wealth, Gerry due to demon hunting reasons. “Introduce us to your coworkers, they seem delightful.”

Jon affected a sneer. “Yes, delightful.” 

“Sorry, honey, _she_ says you’re stuck working this job for at least six more months,” Agnes said, faux-sympathetically. Martin and Tim exchanged confused looks. “If it makes you feel any better, Gerry’s stuck infiltrating Fairchild Inc for the next month. And _I’m_ burning down small governments again.”

“I’m an _executive assistant_ ,” Gerry moaned.

Tim squinted at Agnes. “Who _are_ you people?”

“Superheroes,” Gerry said. “Wish it involved less filing, though.”

“Suck it up,” Jon said flatly. But he sighed, walking over to the coat rack and shrugging on his coat. “Fine, we’ll do lunch.” He sighed again, already resigning himself to what he was about to do. He looked at Tim and Martin. “Early lunch, everybody. I’m willing to pay for everyone’s meals with the Institute card. _Please_ don’t make me regret this.”

Behind him, Sasha choked on her spit. 

Tim’s face split into a grin. “If you _insist_ , Boss, we obviously -”

“Yes!” Martin burst out, face red. “Yes, totally, let’s go!”

“Sounds great!” Agnes cheered. When Sasha poked her head out from behind Jon, still flummoxed, she shot Sasha a warm smile. Sasha flushed, making Agnes smile wider. “I can’t wait for you to introduce us to all of your new friends, Jon.”

“We aren’t friends,” Jon complained. At Gerry’s mild look, he quickly added, “and don’t you _dare_ tell Oliver I’m not ‘seizing my youth’ or such nonsense.”

“Let’s go, everybody,” Sasha said loudly, clapping her hands. “It’s time to celebrate, up and at ‘em, no more work!”

“Celebrate what?” Jon groused. “My _flatmates_ , who I’ve known for _twenty years_ , showing up?”

“Stop whining and come hang out with your friends,” Agnes said. 

And Jon knew better than to argue with her. 

He let the others file out in front of him, Tim and Sasha quickly sliding up to Agnes and interrogating her about how someone like _her_ became friends with someone like _him_. Martin lingered, clearly wanting to talk to Jon alone, but when Jon gave him an impatient look he scampered off too. Only Gerry lingered, as Jon grabbed the keys off the hook and took his time sorting through them. 

“Are they buying it?” Gerry whispered. 

For the first time that day, Jon let himself smile. “Grumpy, asshole, persnickety Jonathan Sims could _never_ believe in ghosts. How’s our work on Elias doing?”

“It’s slow going, but Annabelle thinks that we’ll be able to find the Panopticon by Christmas. Bring your melon baller.” Gerry grinned brightly. “There are worse eldritch beings to work for, I think. Even if she _is_ still smug that she prevented the apocalypse through gratuitous misuse of timelines.”

“Bugger the world, I never should have accepted the role of spider king,” Jon groused. “Now I have to imitate the Archivist for god knows however long Annabelle wants me to, show up at EvilCon _pretending_ to be of the Beholding, convince my past self to become a supervillain just to prevent the apocalypse, play out that ridiculous theater drama -”

“You minored in theater in uni,” Gerry teased. “You love it.”

Jon sighed. “I love it. The Web is, unfortunately, well suited for me.”

He let Gerry go out first, promising that he’d be close behind, turning the lights off as he locked up the Archives. 

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr is theinternationalacestation.tumblr.com if you want to ask me about Web!Jon and Annabelle's Angels.


End file.
